Diderot, Guiard and Houdon: projects for a funerary monument at Gotha II

• Autores: Christoph Frank, Ulrike D. Mathies, Anne L. Poulet
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 144, Nº 1193, 2002, págs. 475-484
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The career of Jean-Antoine Houdon followed a pattern similar to those of other gifted young sculptors in mid-eighteenth- century France. Awarded the Prix de Rome in 1761, he attended the Ecole des Eleves Proteges in preparation for his study at the French Academy in Rome (1764-68). After his return to Paris he was granted the status of agree, allowing him to participate in the biennial Salon exhibitions; his submissions to his first Salon in 1769 essentially represented the religious and mythological works he produced in Rome.' By 1771, when Frederic-Melchior Grimm - and the court of Gotha - must have grown impatient with Guiard's procrastination over the mausoleum to the Duchess Louise Dorothea, Houdon had attracted the attention of the critics in Paris. Among the portraits he exhibited in the Salon that year was the bust of Denis Diderot, a work in which he conveyed an excellent and lively likeness in a sober undraped antique Roman format without a wig that corresponded perfectly to Diderot's taste.