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拍品专文
As painter to King Louis XIV, Charles Le Brun drew up and designed the statues for the south wing of the Château de Versailles, facing the garden, which were then executed by various sculptors. The long façade required three groups of eight statues placed in pairs on the attic above the columns, plus a group of eight figures on the south wing, making a total of thirty-two statues executed in stone between 1681 and 1682 (Gady, op. cit., p. 86).
This drawing, depicting Mathematics, as the inscription at the bottom indicates, is a study for one statue in a group of eight figures representing arts and sciences. The corresponding statue was formerly identified as Geography because of the globe and compass (fig. 1; ibid., p. 87, fig. 3). Fifteen other preparatory drawings by Charles Le Brun for this series of sculptures are known: four in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (see F. Fossier, Les Dessins du fonds Robert de Cotte de la Bibliothèque nationale de France. Architecture et décor, Paris and Rome, 1997, nos. 49, 50, and 98), one in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (inv. NMH CC 1547; P. Bjurström, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections. II, French Drawings Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Stockholm, 1976, no. 505) and ten at the Musée du Louvre (L. Beauvais, Inventaire général des dessins. École française. Charles Le Brun, Paris, 2000, nos. 2400-2415). The name of the sculptor is often given on the verso of the drawings, but this sheet has been pasted onto an old, thick mount, which has made it impossible to obtain this information.
Fig 1. Anonymous, Mathematics. Marble. Palace of Versailles.
This drawing, depicting Mathematics, as the inscription at the bottom indicates, is a study for one statue in a group of eight figures representing arts and sciences. The corresponding statue was formerly identified as Geography because of the globe and compass (fig. 1; ibid., p. 87, fig. 3). Fifteen other preparatory drawings by Charles Le Brun for this series of sculptures are known: four in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (see F. Fossier, Les Dessins du fonds Robert de Cotte de la Bibliothèque nationale de France. Architecture et décor, Paris and Rome, 1997, nos. 49, 50, and 98), one in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (inv. NMH CC 1547; P. Bjurström, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections. II, French Drawings Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Stockholm, 1976, no. 505) and ten at the Musée du Louvre (L. Beauvais, Inventaire général des dessins. École française. Charles Le Brun, Paris, 2000, nos. 2400-2415). The name of the sculptor is often given on the verso of the drawings, but this sheet has been pasted onto an old, thick mount, which has made it impossible to obtain this information.
Fig 1. Anonymous, Mathematics. Marble. Palace of Versailles.