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| Doccia Manufactory (Florence) Sleeping Endymion ca. 1755-65 porcelain figurine Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jean-Louis Lemoyne Bust of Jacques-Rolland Moreau 1712 marble Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"Lemoyne became a prominent sculptor and official portraitist at the court of King Louis XV. Jacques-Rolland Moreau, member of a wealthy bourgeois family, was a royal counselor and high treasurer for wars. The sitter was depicted wearing an elaborate curled wig and open lace-trimmed shirt, with heavy drapery around the shoulders. The animated style of the bust and its technical virtuosity reflect the influence of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the great Italian Baroque sculptor who had worked briefly in France for the court of Louis XIV in the 1660s."
– from curator's notes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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| Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne Bust of Mlle Victoire Martin 1750 terracotta Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Chelsea Manufactory (London) Italian Beggar ca. 1753-57 porcelain figurine Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Roman sculptor Hermaphroditus 1st century AD marble statuette Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux Bacchante with lowered eyes 1872 terracotta Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"Commissioned by the architect Charles Garnier for the facade of the Paris Opéra, Carpeaux's monumental decorative sculpture La Danse was unveiled on July 26, 1869. The figural group, consisting of a slim central youth shaking a tambourine, with a putto at his feet and encircled by six joyously dancing bacchantes, quickly became the talk of Paris for its frank sensuality and unidealized female nudes. Nearly as shocking was the act of vandalism to which the sculpture was subjected when, during the night of August 27, 1869, a bottle of ink was hurled at it, staining the left front bacchante. Despite its controversial reception, La Danse (now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris) is regarded by many as the artist's masterpiece. Although unused in the end, this terracotta bust of a maiden with vine leaves twined in her hair was one of Carpeaux's studies for the final work. Carpeaux probably modeled this version with the intent of replicating it in an edition of cast terracottas."
– from curator's notes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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| Augustin-Jean Moreau-Vauthier Florentine Lady ca. 1892 ivory bust with silver-gilt collar Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
"A lady carved of ivory wears a silver-gilt lace collar set with pearls. She recalls images of Marie de' Medici, Queen of France, as painted by the Flemish 17th-century masters Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Pourbus the Younger. Moreau-Vauthier, who sculpted in bronze, marble, and terracotta, is especially known for his work in ivory and chryselephantine (a combination of ivory and silver or gold). An eclectic sculptor, he was equally adept at the Gothic, Renaissance, and Rococo styles."
– from curator's notes at the Walters Art Museum
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| Mino da Fiesole Roman Emperor ca. 1455 marble relief Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"Crowned with laurel and dressed in armor, this unidentified Roman emperor's face is shown in pure profile while his shoulders twist, adding a sense of three-dimensionality and movement to the figure. The relief is a reminder of the importance of ancient models for Renaissance Florentines. Giovanni de' Medici, for example, commissioned reliefs of the Roman emperors as decorations for the family palace."
– from curator's notes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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| Georg Baselitz Untitled 1982-83 limewood Tate Gallery |
"Untitled is a monumental figurative sculpture by the German artist Georg Baselitz made from roughly hewn limewood. At two and a half metres tall, the figure, whose legs seem trapped within the wooden base, towers high above the viewer. . . . Untitled was made in Baselitz's studio in Schloss Derneburg, a castle near the city of Hildesheim in northern Germany that the artist bought in 1975 and in which he lived until 2006. . . . From late 1982 and for a year thereafter Baselitz produced a series of eight sculptures, consisting of five standing figures – including this work – and three large heads. Like Untitled, the other four standing figures in this series display ambiguous gestures with their arms, which the artist described in 1983 as 'extreme postures that look abstract, that are highly artistic, are highly charged with meaning, but are never thought through. Everyone knows how powerful they can be.' Preparatory drawings reveal that Baselitz carved these sculptures directly from tree trunks, often using chainsaws and axes. He claimed in 1983 that he worked with wood because he wanted 'to avoid all manual dexterity, all elegance, everything to do with construction.'"
– from curator's notes at the Tate Gallery
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| William Reid Dick Winged Figure ca. 1930 bronze statuette Tate Gallery |
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| Hellenistic Greek sculptor Aphrodite drying her hair 1st century BC bronze statuette Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| attributed to Longton Hall Manufactory (Staffordshire) Hercules and the Nemean Lion 1753-54 porcelain figurines Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| attributed to Vauxhall Manufactory (London) Hercules and the Nemean Lion 1756-60 porcelain figurines Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Adam Lenckhardt Cleopatra 1632-35 ivory statuette Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Erastus Dow Palmer Bust of Flora 1857 marble Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |