Raphael
Artist
Jean-Jacques Feuchère
Paris 1807 – Paris 1852
Title
Raphael
Date
1834 (plaster model)
Materials
Brown patinated bronze and gilded bronze
Dimensions
33.5 x 25.7 x 16.4 cm
Credits
Gift in honour of Guy Cogeval and Nathalie Bondil, inv. 2005.22
Collection
Western Art
Feuchère is known for his elegant modelling of art objects in bronze: decorative statuettes and knickknacks of all sorts designed to adorn middle-class homes. The July Monarchy witnessed the new fashion for small objects in bronze, which replaced biscuit-ware (unglazed porcelain) on mantelpieces and as table centrepieces and clock decorations. Seated in the meditative pose appropriate to great men, Raphael is casually pointing to a sketch of one of his Madonnas. That Italian Renaissance master, the very image of perennially youthful genius, was almost a cult figure throughout the nineteenth century.
