"euterpe" Bronze By F. Barbedienne And A. Collas

19th century sculpture, finely chiseled bronze with medal patina, signed BARBEDIENNE (Ferdinand Barbedienne 1810-1892) & stamp of the founder COLLAS (Achille Collas 1795-1859) Beautiful allegorical composition depicting EUTERPE (muse of lyrical poetry) Note a similar copy exhibited at the Petit Palais, Museum of Fine Arts of the City of Paris. Cast commissioned by the Ministry of the King's House in 1828, after the marble Aphrodite from the Borghese collection and restored in Euterpe in the 17th century. Placed in the staircase of the Charles X museum in the Louvre. Good condition, dimensions: 28.5 cm high X 13 cm wide. Ferdinand Barbedienne settled in Paris in 1822, his meeting with Achille Collas (1795-1859) dates from those years. Collas and Barbedienne went into partnership and opened a foundry in 1838. Barbedienne, very interested in the innovative techniques favored by the government of Louis-Philippe, actively participated in the Romantic movement. The taste for history and Gallo-Roman archaeology spread at the same time as that for antique bronzes. Achille Collas had also invented a mechanical process that made it possible to mathematically reproduce, by means of a reducer, or pantograph, sculptures in the round. This invention was considered from the start to be as important as that of the daguerreotype. The firm of Collas and Barbedienne marketed plaster reductions of the Venus de Milo for a while, then specialized in the production of bronzes based on the antique. At the international exhibition in London in 1851, then at that in Paris in 1855, the firm, registered under the name of Barbedienne, won numerous medals.