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| François Masson Portrait of Madame Roland ca. 1792-93 marble Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
From 1791 to 1793 – at the melodramatic pinnacle of the French Revolution – Madame Roland was one of the most politically powerful individuals in France. Furthering her husband's government career and using his position as a lever, Madame Roland became famous as figurehead, spokesperson, and decision-maker for the Girondist faction. When that faction fell and was purged by Robespierre in 1793, Madame Roland went to the guillotine. This she accomplished with a noble, fearless demeanor, dressed in a beautiful white gown, with strands of her beautiful black hair falling about her shoulders. Michelet in his once-definitive 19th-century history of the Revolution, depicted her as a tragic Roman heroine transported to the modern age.
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| Jean-Antoine Houdon Portrait of Giuseppe Balsame, called Count Alessandro Cagliostro ca. 1786 plaster Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
The Encylcopaedia Britannica lists Alessandro, Count di Cagliostro (1743-1795) under the designation Italian Charlatan. He had been an enormously fashionable conductor of seances in Paris during the mid-1780s. In 1789, just before the French Revolution occurred, Cagliostro was banished from France, after a period of imprisonment in the Bastille. He returned to Italy, where his wife "the Roman beauty Lorenza Feliciani" denounced him to the Inquistion as "a heretic, magician, conjuror and Freemason." He was promptly imprisoned again, and it was in an Italian prison a few years later that he died.
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| Giovanni Bandini Portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici ca. 1572 marble Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
"Italian political leaders showed a preference for having themselves depicted in the manner of the great heroes and warriors of classical antiquity. Their intention was to exalt their authority both through their military and political deeds and through their own image." Cosimo I de' Medici seized control of the government in Florence at age seventeen, following the opportune assassination of a relative. Giovanni Bandini carved him in marble much later, after Cosimo had retired from a lifetime of satisfied power-consolidation.
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| Domenico Guidi Portrait of Pope Alexander VIII 1691 gilded terracotta Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
Alexander VIII was almost eighty years old when chosen as Pope in 1689. He belonged to the Ottoboni family of Venice, who were of course rich and powerful, but his election actually had been effected by agents of Louis XIV, the young French king, who expected political concessions in return. In his short reign – slightly more than a year – the new Pope apparently spent most of his time and energy enriching his own family. That was the papal tradition, and he is remembered as an ardent follower of it.
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| Barthélémy Prieur Portrait of Marie de' Medici, Queen of France ca. 1601-1603 bronze Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Barthélémy Prieur Portrait of Marie de' Medici, Queen of France ca. 1601-1603 bronze Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
Marie de' Medici (1575-1642) is dear to posterity as the principal patron of Rubens. She came from Florence as a young girl in 1600 to marry the French king, Henri IV (below). Many people, then and now, have believed she was involved in her husband's assassination ten years later. Certainly she took up the government with enthusiasm after he died, and proceeded to reverse many established policies.
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| Barthélémy Prieur Portrait of Henri IV, King of France ca. 1601-1603 bronze Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Barthélémy Prieur Portrait of Henri IV, King of France ca. 1601-1603 bronze Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Felipe Ydalgo Buenfiglio Bust of a female Saint 1750s polychromed wood Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Ludovico Lombardo Bust of Lucius Junius Brutus ca. 1550 bronze Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
Lucius Junius Brutus was "the legendary founder of the Roman Republic." His bronze representation, as venerated in modern Rome, appeared on this rolling screen here some while back. The bust above was one of many contemporary versions. A similar process of imaginary portraiture would be repeated a few centuries later in America, with idealized heads of George Washington multiplying and diversifying in widening circles after his death.
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| Lansdowne Bust of Athena of Velletri Rome 2nd century AD marble Los Angeles County Museum of Art (gift of William Randolph Hearst) |
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| Lambert Sigisbert Adam Bust of Neptune ca. 1725-27 terracotta Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Louis-Claude Vasse Head of a Faun ca. 1750 terracotta Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| imitator of Gianlorenzo Bernini Head of Proserpina ca. 1770-1800 marble Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
I am grateful to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for making photographs of the sculpture collection available.