Lot n° 200
Estimation :
6000 - 8000
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 27 000EUR
Jacob SIGISBERT ADAM (1670-1747)
Louis XIV... - Lot 200 - Lynda Trouvé
Jacob SIGISBERT ADAM (1670-1747)
Louis XIV Treading on Heresy
Sketch in terracotta
Height : 50 cm
(Accidents and missing parts).
Related literature :
-Ss. dir. Pierre Hippolyte Pénet and Guilhem Scherf, Les Adams, la sculpture en héritage, cat. exp. Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 18 September 2021-9 January 2022, co-published by Nancy Musées and Snoeck, Ghent, 2021, pp.44-46 ;
-Nicolas Milovanovic, Alexandre Maral (dir.), Louis XIV: l'homme et le roi, cat. exp., Versailles, Château de Versailles, 20 October 2009-7 February 2010, Paris, Skira-Flammarion, 2009;
-Jean Hubac, "Louis XIV et la Fronde," in Histoire par l'image, September 2015 [online] ;
-Alexandra Woolley, "The King's work of mercy: the statue of Louis XIV for the Hôtel de Ville de Paris by Antoine Coysevox, 1687-1689," in Les Cahiers de Framespa, 2012 [online].
Related works:
-Gilles Guérin, Louis XIV terrassant la Fronde, 1653, terracotta model, H.53,5cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des sculptures, inv. RF4742 ;
-Antoine Coysevox, Portrait de Louis XIV, 1687, bronze, H.250 cm, Paris, Musée Carnavalet, inv. S29 ;
-Cornelis Vermeulen (after a drawing by Louis de Boulogne le Jeune), Louis XIV terrassant l'hérésie, etching, Paris, BNF department of prints and photography;
-Jacob Sigisbert Adam, Charles V de Lorraine terrassant un Turc, circa 1700, terracotta, H. 34 x 14 x10 cm, private collection;
-Jacob Sigisbert Adam, Mars, façade of the Adam family house, 57 rue des Dominicains, Nancy.
This terracotta sketch representing Louis XIV trampling on the Heresy is a newly discovered work given to the Nancy artist, Jacob SIGISBERT ADAM, founder of the Adam dynasty. This great family of French sculptors included more than ten artists over three generations, including Claude Michel, known as Clodion, and contributed to the unprecedented influence of French sculpture throughout 18th century Europe.
Our work takes up an iconography used by the monarchy since the beginning of the 17th century: the French king dressed in antique style. This iconography of the triumphant monarch was used early on to support the image of Louis XIV as the victor over the Fronde, as shown in the work by Gilles Guérin (1606-1678), Louis XIV, king of France (1643-1715), overcoming an allegorical figure of the Fronde (terracotta, 53 x 33 x18 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv.RF 4742 and marble group executed in 1654 and preserved at the Château de Chantilly). This emblematic sculpture and iconographic subject were replaced after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by a more positive 'peacemaking' theme for the country's politics. Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720) initiated this movement in 1687 by depicting the king as a peacemaking Roman emperor, leaning on a bundle of palms, the symbol of peace, and no longer as a warrior. This idea is underlined by the bas-relief scenes adorning the base of this statue (today in the courtyard of the Carnavalet Museum, inv. S29) promoting the image of a very Christian king: the first bas-relief represents Piety giving food to the poor; the second Religion overcoming Heresy.
This theme of the king triumphing over Catholicism is so important that one of the two medallions added to the monument in the Place des Victoires, executed by Martin Desjardins (1637-1694), also depicts the destruction of heresy. This theme sealing the political and religious authority of the King was then widely diffused, notably through medals struck in 1685 and 1686.
Our work, like the marble sculpture by Louis Leconte (1644-1694) made around 1685-86 (now destroyed) and the engraving distributed by Cornelis Vermeulen (1644-1708), shows us the triumph of the Most Christian King crushing a man representing the allegory of heresy. In Adam's work, as in the bronze bas-relief by Coysevox mentioned above, the naked, overpowered man holds the mask of duplicity and lies on a book, the Bible, and a serpent. On either side of the sovereign in a hieratic pose stand two female figures: one helmeted, armoured and holding a shield probably represents Minerva and the allegory of War; the other, unfortunately very fragmentary, was probably meant to embody Peace.
The use of terracotta, the theme of our group, the attitude of Louis XIV in profile, certain approximations of proportions (the exaggeratedly long torso), the modelling of the nose close to the "portrait-charge" bring our work unequivocally closer to Charles V of Lorraine overcoming a Turk by Jacob Sigisbert Adam. This allegorical portrait of Charles V, previously unpublished and kept in a private collection, is currently presented in the exhibition organized by the Palais des Ducs de Lorraine-Musée lorrain: Les Adam, la sculpture en hér
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