Théophile Barrau, Salammbô (1894)

THÉOPHILE BARRAU (Carcassonne 1848 - Toulouse 1913)
Salammbô
1894
Terracotta
Signed and dated on the right shoulder: TEVBarrau / 1894
Green marble base in a pyramidal shape
Height of the terracotta: 40 cm
Height of the sculpture and the base together : 80 cm

Terracotta sketch of the head of Salammbô, heroine of Gustave Flaubert (his novel Salammbô was published in 1862), Carthaginian priestess and daughter of general Hamilcar Barca (also Hannibal's father), who fell in love with Matho, a Numidian mercenary. The sketch, dated 1894, is related to a marble group, Matho and Salammbô, which Barrau exhibited at the Salon of 1892 and which obtained the first medal at the Salon, but the treatment is much freer and more Symbolist. The marble, purchased by the city of Paris, today located in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés a little south of Paris, is very damaged. If we compare photographs and postcards of the time with the condiiton it is in today, the poor marble is almost a ruin. Where the marble is rather academic, very finished and very polished, the sketch modeled by the hand of the sculptor is free, inspired, and with the modernist sensitivity of the non-finito. The terracotta rests on a green marble base of a pyramidal shape.