Sculpture - Bronze - Diana The Huntress - Houdon - France - 19th Century

Bronze sculpture with brown patina, representing the goddess "Diana the Huntress", after Jean-Antoine Houdon. In Roman mythology, Diana is the goddess of procreation, hunting, wild nature, and the night. Daughter of "Zeus" and "Leto", twin sister of "Apollo", she is associated with the Moon, as opposed to her brother who is associated with the Sun. She is assimilated to the goddess "Artemis" in Greek mythology. She is represented naked, "Houdon" justified his choice, not in conformity with the customs of the time, because for him, the nudity of the gods, who have a perfect body, is not immodest unlike that of Men. Old edition sculpture, after Houdon. Period second part of the 19th century, circa 1870. France XIX ème Jean - Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) Jean - Antoine Houdon, born March 20, 1741 in Versailles, famous French sculptor, he is one of the most important sculptors of the XVIII ème century, renowned for the realistic rendering of his works. The fact that his father had worked as a concierge at the Royal School of Protected Students, undoubtedly facilitated his beginnings. Student of the Royal Academy before the age of fifteen, boarder of the School of Protected Students (1761-1764), then of the Academy of France in Rome (1764-1768), approved at the Royal Academy in 1769, he was received as a member of the latter in 1777, upon presentation of his Morphée (Louvre). Although in 1793 he was among the first to spontaneously renounce his title and academic privileges, he was elected a member of the new Institute in 1795, and successfully presented his candidacy for the Order of the Legion of Honor in 1803. Neither his two trips to Germany (1771 and 1773), nor his trip to the United States (1785), nor his marriage (1786), nor even the revolutionary turmoil disrupted his creative activity, the most visible manifestation of which was the regularity with which he exhibited at the Salons: from 1769 to 1795, he presented a fairly large number of sculptures every two years. Very skilled in working marble, Houdon also had a great talent for shaping clay and plaster. His work is characterized by realism and precision in the representation of bodies, and in particular busts where he excels and which he knows how to make very lively. According to Grimm, "Houdon was perhaps the first sculptor who knew how to model eyes".