MICHEL ANGUIER - Lot 136

MICHEL ANGUIER MICHEL ANGUIER (1612-1686) MELANCHOLIC PLUTO Bronze statue with golden brown patina H: 54,5 cm Provenance: - Baron de Vinck de Winnezeele (1907-1983) - By descent to the present owners To bid on this lot in the saleroom, by phone or on internet platforms, it is necessary to contact Olivia Roussev, associate director of Antenor Auction: [email protected] 0032 495 74 63 62 After training with his father, a carpenter in Eu, Michel Anguier continued his apprenticeship between 1629 and 1633 in Paris in the workshop of Simon Guillain (1589-1658). From 1641 onwards, he stayed in Rome for about ten years. Alongside Nicolas Poussin and François Duquesnoy, he discovered and developed a passion for works from the Antiquity. He was introduced to the Baroque by Alessandro Algardi (1598-1654) and assisted for a time Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) in the nave of Saint Peter's Basilica and Saint John's Church in Lateran. On his return to France, Michel Anguier joined his brother François on the construction of the funeral monument of the Duke of Montmorency in Moulins (Allier). He then quickly obtained important orders. We also owe him the decoration of the summer apartments of Anne of Austria at the Louvre Palace, the statues commissioned by Nicolas Fouquet for his castle of Saint-Mandé and then for the gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte. He sculpted an important cycle of bas_x0002_reliefs for the Val-de-Grâce as well as the group of the Nativity commissioned by the Regent. He also made the ambitious groups adorning the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris. His exemplary career revolved around these major commissions and his involvement, albeit late, but intensive, within the Royal Academy of which he was assistant professor in 1668, then rector in 1671. If Michel Anguier is one of the custodians of the great style of Versailles sculpture instilled by François Girardon (1628-1715). He is also undoubtedly at the origin of the diffusion and the craze for independent statuettes cast in bronze, a typology of works that he had the opportunity to admire in Italy such as the famous ensemble of the Medici Studiolo in Florence. This art, until then often kept for church decoration only, developed in part thanks to the critical and commercial success of the famous Cycle of Gods and Goddesses, designed by Anguier shortly after his return from Rome. On May 6, 1690, at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Guillet de Saint Georges reported about this cycle: "M. Anguier was occupied in 1652 with the models of six figures, each 18 inches (48.8 cm relating to the figure alone) which have been cast in bronze and which represent a thundering Jupiter, a jealous Juno, an agitated Neptune, a tranquil Amphitrite, a melancholy Pluto, a Mars who leaves arms and a tearful Ceres (... )”. (Unpublished Memoirs, 1855 p. 438). This "antiquomania", very fashionable in 17th century France, also occupied him intensely since it involved the '14 Tonnerre stone figures representing life-size Gods and Goddesses' he made for Nicolas Fouquet in the years 1655-1654. Our bronze, whose model belongs to this famous series of Gods and Goddesses, represents the Roman god of the Underworld. Michel Anguier was inspired by the famous antique Farnese Hercules (H. 317 cm, marble, currently kept at the Archaeological Museum of Naples) a cast of which was made by Poissant for the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1666 (Print integral of the Farnese Hercules, third quarter of the 17th century, overmoulding attributed to Thibault Poissant and Guillaume Cassegrain, Height: 326 cm, Paris, Louvre museum, n°inv.Gy1300) to design a Pluton as powerful and massive as it is pensive. He is accompanied by the dog Cerberus which derives from the ancient Canis molossus that Anguier was also able to study previously in Rome (now in the Pio Clementino Museo, Vatican). We know about the existence of this model and the intentions that accompanied its creation thanks to the very first lecture that Michel Anguier gave to the Academy, as was required by his position, on November 9, 1669. Taking the Farnèse Hercules as a subject, Michel Anguier introduces his personal theory based on the role of humoral physiology in the expression of feelings through physical characteristics. While this thesis was debated in Roman artistic circles in the 1640s, Michel Anguier was one of the first academicians (along with the painters Noël and Antoine Coypel) to grasp in France the ancient theory of humors drawn from the writings of the Greek physician Galen, and applied to three-dimensional art. This theory is also the subject of another of his lectures, “On the manner of depicting the deities according to their temperaments”, which was read in 1676. He invites the sculptors to make coincide the physiognomic aspect of the figure’s body to his inner state of mind. In this sense, his approach to art is innovative: he intends to go beyond the basics of academic teaching, which corresponds to learning in the ancient way by copying stricto sensu. He also recommends meditating "slowly and separately on the beautiful ancient figures" rather than simply copying them mechanically. To illustrate his personal application of this humoral theory, Michel Anguier presents during this conference a copy of Pluto to his audience (we know neither its material nor its dimensions): "I put forward all these particularities in order to warn to be careful, when we want to make the portrait of some divinities, to observe their temperament well. This observation will facilitate us to shape successfully the heads, the face’s expression, the action of the figure, the form of the flesh and even the draperies, as we see with this sculpture of Pluto which we have represented with a cold and dry melancholy, coarse, earthy and dripping, caused by sour, biting and cold water which the spleen has not been able to purify, and (which), driven to the bottom of the ventricle, excites a perpetual hunger”. In the light of this description and the humoral theory, the subjectivity of the adjectives chosen by the artist to designate his Gods and Goddesses takes on its full meaning: Melancholy Pluto is the literal transcription of his atrabilary physiognomy… The Melancholy Pluto, in its bronze version, is known to us in two distinct sizes; 23.5 cm and a larger version around 55 cm. Our bronze is part of this second corpus by its proportions and its casting characteristics. We note an exceptional imprint quality and a bronze patina nuanced with red, ranking it amongst the best examples known. Its dimension of 54.5 cm, including the base, also indicates it as being possibly the dimension of the oldest models in the 2008 exhibition catalog of the “French Bronzes” of 2008 (pp. 205-205). Finally, the metallographic analysis (performed on April 11, 2023 by the CARAA laboratory), which also distinguishes it from the other works already studied and corresponding to more "refined" editions of 1700 or later, suggests that it could be an early casting, perhaps one of the first examples, dating back to the years 1660-1670. The present work, from the estate of Baron de Vinck, was previously unpublished. Bibliography: -Julia K. Dabbs, “Humoring the Antique. Michel Anguier and the physiological interpretation of the Ancient Greek Sculpture”, Critical Perspectives on Roman Baroque Sculpture, ss dir. Anthony Colantuono and Steven F. Ostrow, Penn State Univ. Press, 2014, pp. 203-218 -Conférences de l’Académie royale de Peinture et Sculpture, 1648-168, Édition critique intégrale sous la direction de Jacqueline Lichtenstein et Christian Michel, Paris, Beaux-Arts de Paris éditions, 2007, vol 2, P323—339 et pp. 593— 605, vol 1:377—87. -Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Guilhem Scherf (sous la dir.), Bronzes français de la Renaissance au Siècle des Lumières, Paris, Musée du Louvre éd., 2008, pp. 212- 215 et pp.204-205 ; -Olga Raggio, Sculpture in the Grand Manner : Two Goups by Anguier and Monnot, in Apollo , nov. 1977, pp. 364-375; -H Stein, « les Frères Anguier, notice sur leur vie et leurs œuvres d’après des documents inédits ». Réunion des sociétés des Beaux-arts des départements, XIII, E Plon,1889, pp.527-609 ; -Armand Samson, Les frères Anguiers : deux sculpteurs normands, E. Cagniard imprimeur, Rouen, 1889 ; -Guillet de Saint Georges, Mémoires inédits sur la vie et les ouvrages des membres de l’académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Paris, 1854, I, p440 - Dézallier d’Argenville, Vie des fameux Sculpteurs depuis la renaissance des arts : avec la description de leurs ouvrages, Paris, 1787, II, pp.159-172 ; -Comte de Caylus, Vie d’Anguier et de Regnaudin [conférence du 3 mai 1749], dans Mémoires inédits…, p. 451-478. Related works : For the large version : -Michel Anguier, Pluton mélancolique, bronze, H. 57 x L. 19,9 x P. 15,8 cm, Paris, collection particulière reproduit in Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Guilhem Scherf (sous la dir.), Bronzes français de la Renaissance au Siècle des Lumières, op.cit., p. 212, cat. 58A. -Anonyme, Pluton mélancolique d’après le modèle de Michel Anguier, bronze, H. 59 cm, Paris, musée Carnavalet, n° inv. S3293. For the small version : -Michel Anguier, Pluton mélancolique, bronze, H. 23,9 x L. 11,1 x P. 9 cm, Dresde, Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Grünes Gewölbe, n° inv. IX.37.