Smiling Angel - A Caron 1857-1932

Period After 1916 Dimensions Height: approx. 12 cm Weight: 370 grams Signature signed under the right shoulder Material Bronze proof with golden patina. Resting on a hexagonal base acting as a seal (not engraved), the bronze is made of a single piece.

Alexandre Auguste Caron likes to sculpt delicate subjects, smiling, a tad mischievous. The Smiling Angel of Reims Cathedral could only inspire her! He focuses here mainly on the smile of the angel, ignoring his main attribute, his wings. He gently chisels, like his distant companion, the youthful features, the hairstyle all in curls held back by a tie and that famous, so famous smile all at once joyful, benevolent and slightly enigmatic, as though penetrated by a secret that only angels know In 1211, work began on the “new” Notre-Dame de Reims cathedral. They only end three centuries later. And yet the cathedral remains partially unfinished, since the arrows initially intended to overcome the towers are not erected. The north portal (the one on the left) of the western facade is decorated with 2,303 sculptures made between 1236 and 1245. Carved from a single block of stone, with grace and delicacy, by one of the master imagiers of this immense building site, the 'Smiling Angel' stands on the left side of this north portal. His wings spread, dressed in a cape closed by a diamond fibula and a sober long tunic belted at the waist and which offers to the gaze a bubbling of vertical tubular folds demonstrating all the skill of the master sculptor who made it , his face is slightly tilted, turned beyond Saint Nicaise who is at his side, towards another smiling angel.
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