Medici Venus
| Reference: | S6174 |
| Author | François Perrier |
| Year: | 1653 ca. |
| Printed: | Rome |
| Measures: | 130 x 225 mm |
€90.00
| Reference: | S6174 |
| Author | François Perrier |
| Year: | 1653 ca. |
| Printed: | Rome |
| Measures: | 130 x 225 mm |
€90.00
Description
The statue depicted is the so called Medici Venus.
According to Pirro Ligorio, the statue was found in Rome, near the Trajan Baths, inside the vineyard of Bishop of Viterbo, Sebastiano Gualtieri. It immediately became part of the prelate’s collection and in 1566, it was bought by Alfonso d’Este. In 1575 it was sold to Ferdinando de’ Medici, who decided to export it to the collection of antiquities at Villa Medici in Rome. The statue was kept in the sumptuous Roman residence for over a century. In 1677, it was moved to Florence, together with masterpieces such as the Knife Grinder and the Wrestlers. These famous works were exhibited in the Tribuna, the most precious space of the Uffizi, and the Venus was elevated to symbolic representation of the Florentine museum in its entirety. The prestige of the statue can be seen in subsequent events and the successive collecting history. In 1802, Napoleon ordered the transfer of the statue to Paris. The French period lasted until 1816, when the statue was relocated back to its original location in Florence.
In a rare circumstance for ancient statues, the Venus has a known author. The base podium in fact bears his signature, Cleomenes, son of Apollodorus, a sculptor working in Athens during the 1st century B. C. The work is therefore datable to the period between the 2nd and the 1st century B. C. Recent tests have brought to light traces of the original colours: there are in fact obvious remains of gilding on the top of the hair, cinnabar on the lips and Egyptian blue on the base.
Plate taken from the famous Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum, quae temporis dentem invidium evasere Urbis aeternae ruinis erepta Typis aeneis ab ce commissa Perpetuae venerationis monumentum, Rome, De' Rossi, 1653 or ante 1691.
Trained as a painter in Rome in the years 1620-25 in the workshop of Giovanni Lanfranco, François Perrier dictated the Borgognone (whence the monogram FPB, with F and P superimposed) operated in the early thirties in the orbit of Simon Vouet in Paris, where he had as students Le Brun and Dufresnoy. Back in Rome for a decade starting in 1635, he produced two collections of etchings from antiquity, the Segmenta (1638) and the Icones et segmenta illustrium e marmore tabularum quae Romae adhuc extant... printed on his return to Paris (1645).
The Segmenta reproduce in one hundred plates a wide collection of ancient statues "spared by the envious tooth of Time" present in the main Roman collections; the Icones instead the most famous bas-reliefs, in fifty-five plates. Both works were designed with the fundamental collaboration of Giovan Pietro Bellori, the greatest theoretical and historical-artistic authority of seventeenth-century classicism, and other scholars, and belong to the genre of atlases of Roman antiquities spread throughout Europe from the mid-sixteenth century.
Perrier's atlas, conceived above all as a sort of 'paper academy' for artists - almost a printed version of a notebook of models - supported by a vast antiquarian erudition, had a considerable fortune, testified by the numerous reprints and derivations over three centuries.
The discrepancies of some plates with respect to the first edition of the Segmenta (many are in counterpart, and there are widespread differences in the hatching) correspond not to proofs, as assumed by some, but to the re-edition at the Roman printing house De 'Rossi, inventoried under the title of Statue insigni di Roma intagliate in acquaforte, e copiate da Francesco Perrier libro in 103 quarti fogli imperiali nel 1677 (cf, Le regole della bellezza 2012, pp. 9-10) and later in the Indice 1797, p. 4), made with a new set of plates (now preserved at the Rome Calcografia) in the impossibility of reusing the original ones, returned to France with Perrier.
Beautiful proof, printed on contemporary laid paper, trimmed in copper, in excellent condition.
Bibliografia
Lorenzo Fatticcioni, Le regole della bellezza. Saperi antiquari e teorie dell'Arte nei Segmenta nobilium Signorum et Statuarum di François Perrier, (2012); Gerardo de Simone, François Perrier, Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum, Roma, De' Rossi 1653; con disegni della bottega Baratta (2016).
François Perrier (1590 - 1650)
|
François Perrier (1590–1650) was a French painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Perrier was instrumental in introducing into France the grand style of the decorative painters of the Roman Baroque. He is also remembered for his two collections of prints after antique sculptures, the Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum quae temporis dentem invidium evasere (Paris, 1638), and Icones et segmenta...quae Romae adhuc extant (Paris, 1645). These prints provided visual repertories of classical models for generations of European artists and connoisseurs. Perrier was born in Pontarlier. During the years 1620–1625, he resided in Rome, where he took as his model the practitioner of academic Baroque classicism, Giovanni Lanfranco while he was employed on the fresco decoration of the dome of S. Andrea della Valle, one of the earliest examples of Roman Baroque ceiling decoration. On his return to France, following a brief stay in Lyon he settled in Paris in 1630. Here he worked in the classicising circle of Simon Vouet. In 1632–1634, he had as his pupil Charles Le Brun, who would become a central figure of official French painting in the age of Louis XIV. Perrier returned to Rome in 1635, remaining there for the next decade. During this period he created decorations for palazzo Peretti and saw to the publication in Paris of his great repertory of images. In 1645, once again in Paris, he painted the ceiling of the gallery of the Hôtel de La Vrillière, now the seat of the Banque de France and worked with Eustache Le Sueur on the cabinet de l’amour in the Hôtel Lambert. In 1648, Perrier was one of the founders of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and was elected as one of the original twelve elders in charge of its running. He died in Paris.
|
François Perrier (1590 - 1650)
|
François Perrier (1590–1650) was a French painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Perrier was instrumental in introducing into France the grand style of the decorative painters of the Roman Baroque. He is also remembered for his two collections of prints after antique sculptures, the Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum quae temporis dentem invidium evasere (Paris, 1638), and Icones et segmenta...quae Romae adhuc extant (Paris, 1645). These prints provided visual repertories of classical models for generations of European artists and connoisseurs. Perrier was born in Pontarlier. During the years 1620–1625, he resided in Rome, where he took as his model the practitioner of academic Baroque classicism, Giovanni Lanfranco while he was employed on the fresco decoration of the dome of S. Andrea della Valle, one of the earliest examples of Roman Baroque ceiling decoration. On his return to France, following a brief stay in Lyon he settled in Paris in 1630. Here he worked in the classicising circle of Simon Vouet. In 1632–1634, he had as his pupil Charles Le Brun, who would become a central figure of official French painting in the age of Louis XIV. Perrier returned to Rome in 1635, remaining there for the next decade. During this period he created decorations for palazzo Peretti and saw to the publication in Paris of his great repertory of images. In 1645, once again in Paris, he painted the ceiling of the gallery of the Hôtel de La Vrillière, now the seat of the Banque de France and worked with Eustache Le Sueur on the cabinet de l’amour in the Hôtel Lambert. In 1648, Perrier was one of the founders of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and was elected as one of the original twelve elders in charge of its running. He died in Paris.
|