Terms and conditions of use
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SÈVRES PORCELAIN FACTORY, Sèvres (manufacturer), Josse-François-Joseph LE RICHE (modeller), Augustin PAJOU (after)
René Descartes
(1783-1800)
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Everard Studley Miller Bequest, 1962
- Gallery location
- 17th & 18th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
In 1776 the comte d’Angiviller, Director General of the King’s Buildings to Louis XVI, commissioned from leading French sculptors a series of marble sculptures of great figures from French history, intended to adorn the Grand Gallery of the Louvre Palace. The Sèvres factory produced biscuit porcelain versions of twenty-three of the twenty-seven portrait sculptures eventually completed. These included Augustin Pajou’s portrait of the great seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. The first set of twenty-three figures produced was acquired by Louis XVI for his personal library at Versailles. The unglazed biscuit-porcelain emulates the surface appearance of marble, lending the portrait figures a monumental, Classical quality.
Artwork Details
Everard Studley Miller Bequest, 1962
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Level 2, NGV International