Dying Gladiator (2) by Michel Mosnier

In the serie of sculptures representing gladiators, lets have a look at the other French sculptor, Michel Monier, or Mosnier, who, in 1681, did this large marble sculpture called "Le Gladiateur Mourant" or "The Dying Gladiator".

Photo blog Versailles

Michel Monier is a French sculptor, born in Blois,  in the Loire Valley famous for all French castles. His birthdate is unknown. He died in Paris on Chritsmas 1686 (December 24).

Photo Labaronne

Monier was the official sculptor for the French King, and worked the last 4 years of his life in Versailles, from 1682, the same year that Louis XIV established Versailles as the King official residency, which will last a little more than 100 years, until 1789, with Louis XV, followed by Louis XVI.

Several copies have been made, some can be seen in England, like below, at the Rousham House & Garden, Oxfordshire.

And here, a copy in bronze, at the Iford Manor, Wilshire.

The dying gladiator sculpture was reproduced (wood engraving) in 1833 on the Penny Magazine, an ''illustrated British magazine aimed at the working class, published every Saturday from 31 March 1832 to 31 October 1845. Charles Knight created it for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, in response to Chamber's Edinburgh Journal, which started two months earlier. It was sold for a penny and illustrated with wood-engravings"".

Sources :
Le superbe blog spécialisé en photos de Versailles : voir ce blog
Wikipedia

mourant
This beautiful engraving was made in 1723 by Simon Thomassin in Paris. It is from his work Recuel des Statue, Groupes, Fontaines, Termes, Vases et Autres Mangifique Ornamens du Chateau et Parc de Versailles, which shows the magnificent statues, fountains and ornaments at the Palace of Versaille. King Louis XIV commissioned this work and Thomassin held the title Graveur du Roy (Engraver of the King).
This antique print was made by copper plate engraving. The paper is hand-made and chain-linked (if you hold the paper up to a strong light you can see it was made by laying the paper pulp onto a lattice of chains).
- See more at: http://www.finerareprints.com/a-fallen-gladiator-25210#sthash.c3FQrUV3.dpuf

Le gladiateur mourant
This beautiful engraving was made in 1723 by Simon Thomassin in Paris. It is from his work Recuel des Statue, Groupes, Fontaines, Termes, Vases et Autres Mangifique Ornamens du Chateau et Parc de Versailles, which shows the magnificent statues, fountains and ornaments at the Palace of Versaille. King Louis XIV commissioned this work and Thomassin held the title Graveur du Roy (Engraver of the King).
This antique print was made by copper plate engraving. The paper is hand-made and chain-linked (if you hold the paper up to a strong light you can see it was made by laying the paper pulp onto a lattice of chains).
- See more at: http://www.finerareprints.com/a-fallen-gladiator-25210#sthash.c3FQrUV3.dpuf

Hephaestion, the lover of Alexander the Great

Earlier this month, announcement was made by some Greek archeologists that the individual buried in the mound discovered in Greece last year in Amphipolis could be Hephaestion, Alexander the Great's lover.

Very few sculptures seem to exist about him. 

The 2 heads below, located in the Getty Villa Museum, show Alexander on the left, and Hephaestion on the right. This head was part of a full-length statue. According to the Getty Museum, some traits of this head has changed over time : ''A metal ribbon or diadem once circled the head, although only a shallow groove remains today. The head was also re-carved in antiquity, with the hair shortened and the lower eyelids altered."

Alexander the Great & Hephaestion - Getty Villa Museum, Malibu, California USA

Hephaestion was described as very handsome, taller than Alexander.
He is also sculpted on this bas-relief, Hephaestion is on the left.

And probably here riding his horse on Alexander's sarcophagus as well, as seen below.  This sarcophagus is considered the exceptional piece of the Istambul Archeology Museum (Turkey).

Check this interesting video.

A large head in bronze is reportedly displayed in the Prado Museum (Madrid - Spain).

Regarding the discovery :
During several months, experts explored the surrounding, previous walls, floors etc. and revealed beautiful mosaics, huge sphinxes and statues. As well as bones, which are currently being analyzed.

They also found the monogram of Hephaestion, and inscriptions saying : “I, Antigonus received construction material for the erection of a monument in honor of Hephaestion.”

Was Hephaestion gay (1) ?

According to Guy MacLean Rogers, professor of history at Wellesley College and the author of “Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness,
” Modern sexual categories like homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual did not exist at the time. “In ancient Greece, acting upon a desire (sent by the god Eros) for another man or woman, simply did not lock any man or woman into a sexual camp,” Rogers wrote. 

 ''Whatever the nature of their relationship, when Hephaestion died in western Iran in October 324 B.C., Alexander mourned his loss by shaving his own hair, not eating for days, executing Hephaestion’s doctor, and commissioning an expensive funeral pyre. Alexander himself would die eight months later, having built an empire that stretched from modern Greece to India.''

Below is the map showing the impressive extent of Alexander's campagns and empire, covered with Hephaestion as his general and lover.

Was Hephaestion gay (2) ? 

Jay Spears summarizes it this way:
''2,300 years ago men in Greece had wives, mistresses, and lovers of either gender. Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon, had male lovers and also many wives, a problem when half-brothers would fight to the death over the throne. Alexander refused to marry and beget an heir when he left Macedon to conquer the world. 

Alexander loved his boyhood friend, Hephaestion. Both brilliant boys, they were tutored by Aristotle, with whom Hephaestion kept up a lifelong correspondence. Alexander and Hephaestion felt like the two heroes Achilles and Patroclus, from The Iliad, which was Alexander's favorite book."

Hephaestion drawing by AmandaTurnage

Some biography elements :

"Hephaestion started off as a regular cavalry soldier - Alexander did not play favorites - and rose through the ranks on merit and carried out the most important military and administrative assignments. Later, Alexander also fell in love with a courtier from the conquered Persian court, scandalous not because the courtier was male, but because he was Persian -- most Greeks thought that other people were barbarians. Alexander married a princess from a faraway mountain kingdom of Asia, but it's unclear if he loved her because their only child was born much later. He also married the defeated Persian king's daughter, a purely political marriage, and Hephaestion married her sister, since he and Alexander wanted their children to be cousins."

"After they conquered Asia, Hephaestion died suddenly of typhus. Alexander's grief was monumental. He asked the oracles if Hephaestion was a god (back then people could become gods by achievement) and was told that Hephaestion was indeed a hero, a lesser type of god. Now Alexander, who had no doubt about his own divinity, knew that he would meet his beloved again in the Blessed Realm, where gods and heroes live. He got his first wife pregnant and died himself without waiting for the child to be born, all within eight months of Hephaestion's death, just as Achilles had followed Patroclus in the Iliad. He was 32 years old."

Sources and to go further:
The second Achille
Gay Heroes
Livius
Le Point
Amphipolis

Dying Gladiator (1) by Pierre Julien

The theme of the dying gladiator, dying slave, dying Gaul has been sculpted by several major artists. We have seen previously the dying slave from Michel Angelo here. Today is a post about the Dying Gladiator sculpture by Pierre Julien, located in the Louvre museum.
Another post on that theme will follow with another sculptor.

Pierre Julien is a French sculptor born on 20 June 1731. He died on 17 December 1804.
He was an apprentice at an early age and then went to Paris to work under the supervision of Guillaume Coustou.

He was accepted at the French Academy in Rome (Italy), where he stayed several years. Coming back to France, he did some master pieces, such as the mausoleum of Louis (eldest son of King Louis XIV), in the Sens cathedral. He did his Ganymède (picture of that sculpture can be seen here in this blog), with the objective to be received at the Academie de peinture et de Sculpture, but failed (read more details below). He succeeded though, with this today's sculpture, the Dying Gladiator.
He was named one of the original members of the Institut de France and also Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur.

Valerie Montalbetti, from the Louvre Museum, describes very well this sculpture of the Dying Gladiator, and some key elements of his life.

"A crucial work for the artist : A mortally wounded gladiator, facing death with grace and dignity, is contemplating the laurel crown he was awarded for his courage. This was Pierre Julien’s second admission piece for the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and a crucial work for him. He had presented another piece for admission in 1776, a statue of Ganymede (Louvre) and had been refused, possibly due to his teacher, Guillaume II Coustou’s, lack of support for his too talented pupil.

Humiliated by this unjust failure, Julien had thought of becoming a naval sculptor but, encouraged by friends, persevered and presented Dying Gladiator to the Académie in 1778. He was admitted on 27 March 1779 and appointed an assistant teacher in 1781...  ''

''In this scholarly work, the artist demonstrated his mastery of academic criteria whilst asserting personal qualities. The statue is a proclamation of his knowledge of antique sculpture. He was reinterpreting the Dying Gladiator in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, a marble copy of which he had sculpted during his stay at the Académie de France in Rome from 1769 to 1772.

The pose of the legs seems to have been inspired by the famous antique sculpture The Knife Grinder in Florence, a marble copy of which was executed by the Italian Foggini in 1684 for Versailles (now in the Louvre). Julien’s nude gladiator demonstrates his complete mastery of anatomy, and also drapery at the rear of the statue. ''

Photo Ivan Lemeur

''But it was the sculptor’s personal contribution which imbues the work with its sensitivity: the elegant proportions, unctuous modelling and delicate execution (the finesse of the hands, laurel leaves and strands of hair), the marble’s perfect finish and the rendering of textures (the polish of the shield and sword suggest their metallic brilliance).''

''... Julien was exalting the heroism of a man overcoming his pain and stoically dying in silence. The balanced composition, dignified pose, discreet chest wound and restrained expression are formal echoes of this heroic serenity. Like the Laocoon, one of the most admired antique statues at that time, the gladiator is in agony but not crying out in pain, and it is this dignity in suffering which makes the figure more sensitive and inward-looking. ...”

Book about Pierre Julien by André PASCAL:

Sources:
Wikipedia biography
Louvre Museum full text by Valerie Montalbetti

Oreste by Pierre-Charles Simart

Pierre-Charles Simart was a French sculptor, born in Troyes on 27 June 1806.
Many of his art pieces are located in Troyes, and Paris. For today's post, I will show you his Oreste.

A few extracts from his biography:
Pierre-Charles' father was a carpenter, and his father sent him very early (at 6 years old) to follow drawing classes. While helping his father between 13 and 16 yo, he sculpts inside the family house.

La main d'Oreste - photo by Michèle Fleury

At the age of 17, he got a monthly scholarship from his native town, to pursue sculpture classes in Paris.

At the age of 27, he already won the first Grand Prix de Rome, with the bas-relief  in plaster 'Le Vieillard et les enfants'.
Regarding 'our' Oreste, one is in marble, visible at the Art museum of Rouen (France).
 

Oreste réfugié à l’autel de Pallas

   There is also a similar sculpture in bronze, located Place St Nizier in Troyes (France).

Photo by Jacques.

This sculpture, and the myth, also inpired the French artists Pierre & Gilles. Their Oreste art piece, photograph below, was part of the exhibition entitled 'Heroes' organized by the Gallery Templon in Paris in 2014.
 

 

Other works from Pierre-Charles Simart include 'decors' for the Paris townhall such as 'Architecture' and 'Sculpture'. Last but not least, he sculpted during 6 years the tumb of Napoléon 1st in Paris' Invalides, including not only the famous statue itself, but also the 19 allegoric bas-reliefs.

He was an elected member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1852.

He 'stupidly' died in Paris on 27 May 1857, reportedly falling from a public bus.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Jacques Schweitzer website about the fabulous city of Troyes

The weight of Oneself - Elmgreen & Dragset

What a great sculpture, and wonderful title!
It shows at first glance a very classic medium, marble, and a traditional scene or subject, with apparently a nude hero, but it is not so classic, and it is not a hero in the old meaning!

Photo Carlos Martin

Elmgreen & Dragset said that they 'use the language of classical sculpture in order to play with it'. During an interview, the artists explained : 'Many details will contribute to making our sculpture contemporary: the subject, the idea that this sculpture is evocative of the notion of looking after oneself, in different ways. The material used, as well as its scale will make it also very contemporary. The fact that it isn’t a sculpture on a human scale will emphasize its depth.'
Indeed they used powder marble, which is solidified. And the size or height is out of ordinary, with 2m70.

Photo Dufy

Regarding the sculpture title, they added that 'it will be representative of our contemporary culture. The work will not be celebrating a hero, nor someone pursuing a goal, or attempting to accomplish something. This will be the story of someone who is trying to save himself.'.

Photo Jacques Leone

Himself ? Yes, because if you look closely, you will see that the two faces (the one from the man standing, and the one from the dead man are the same. Spectators can wonder the various possible meanings of it. Souvenirs ? Mythology ? Philosophy ? Own responsibility ? Justice ?  Well, the sculpture is located just in front of the Palais de Justice !

Photo Terry Cooper

The two artists who created this sculpture are working together since 20 years, in Berlin, Germany, but one, Michael Elmgreen, was born in 1961 in Copenhagen (Denmark), and the other, Ingar Dragset, was born in 1968 in Trondheim (Norway).

Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset by Henridraw

They often display their pieces in public space. In this case, the sculpture is almost on the water, facing the Palais de Justice in Lyon, and this location may not be a coincidence.

Photo Jan Bucholtz

Sources and more information:
Wikipedia 
Arttube video interview
Interview (written)

Video (the weight of Oneself)

Carrara marble, and the courageous 'cavatori'

Many of the beautiful marble statues, like the David from Michelangelo, were created, and sculpted, with white marble of Italy, and from specific quarries like the one in Carrara.

The short (18 minutes) black and white movie below is an impressive story of the daily life of the courageous men who went up to extract these blocs of marble. Imagine life 50 years ago.... that was the date of the movie (1958) and then what it could have been 400 or 500 years ago.

No translation needed, the pictures & video speak by themselves!

FENICE FILM presenta I CAVATORI (1958)
Un Documentario di Francesco Tarabella girato il pellicola 16mm Ferrania
Primo Premio Assoluto - Festival internazionale Cinematografico MONTECATINI
da una poesia di Lorenzo Tarabella


The two, as impressive, videos below show the contrasted modern technology and transport applied today at the same quarry.

Male art & gay art collector's interview 2 - Paul

Today's interview is from Paul S., from Atlanta, USA, who is telling us in his very own words some personal stories.

Q.1 Could you tell us why you appreciate male art ? 

In 1945, when I was six years old, my father came back from WWII  where he had been a surgeon for three years in the US Army in North Africa and Italy. He had brought back for me a beautifully bound red leather book “ THE WONDERS OF ITALY”.

I was utterly beguiled by the book. My father loved Italy and particularly Florence. He would spend time with me showing me the photos of the paintings and sculpture that were in Florence. I was attracted particularly to the photos of Michelangelo’s DAVID ( much more than Donatello’s!.) and Masaccio’s THE EXPULSION OF ADAM AND EVE.

Michel Angelo's David - Firenze, Italy. Photo by Serge Briez.

I think I remember taking the book to show and tell at school. It would be very amusing  to hear  a recording of what I said when I showed the book to my classmates.

In my early years of adolescence, I knew I liked ‘messing’ around with my friends on campouts etc. but that soon ended and I was of the generation where it was impossible to think of being gay. I hid my interest in men by looking at art books and enjoying the males in heterosexual pornography. Art classes at Princeton afforded me the opportunity to enjoy all the nude male paintings and sculpture of the artist of Greece, Rome, the Renaissance and paintings of the nude male as well as sculpture down to the present day.

In 1959, I went to France and Italy. I was in heaven from the Rodin museum in Paris to the Academia in Florence as well as the church with the Masaccio paintings. I started buying art books at this point not paintings, drawings or sculpture. In 1961, I was finally exposed to Greek Erotic drawings. Unfortunately you couldn’t buy the books in the USA then.

Q.2 Among the art pieces you purchased, could you describe one or two ?

I was married and then divorced in 2006. I essentially was living separately from 1998 on and I then started buying distinctly homoerotic art. My major source then was the Adonis Art Gallery in London. A very good friend of mine in France, Jean-Louis Mennesson lives at the Chateau Outrelaise in Normandy. He is a photographer and had beautiful photos of past lovers etc. He is also a very good friend of a French artist Bernadette Kelly whose major theme is the male nude body. I bought some of her drawings and a painting of a swimming scene with the male body in seven positions at a pool from swimming to diving to observing. Her models were dancers from the Paris ballet.

Bernadette Kelly - Le bain - Oil painting

Q.3 Is there a male art piece that gave you a strong feeling or emotion ?

I visited Villa Rainbow and saw the sculptures of J-Christophe and was immediately attracted to his work and I am pleased to say I have one of his sculptures.
J-Christophe introduced me to the late Patrick Poivre de la Freta. Before Patrick's death I purchased a painting and then from his estate some of his drawings. From my visits to Villa Rainbow, I have been inspired to commission for my bathroom a mosaic of a male nude that is my shower.
Sadly, I am unable to spend a vast amount but I enjoy very much and take pleasure in what I have acquired.
 ______________________________________________________________________

Thank you very much Paul!

Some links:

Château d'Outrelaise website
Patrick Poivre de la Freta in this blog

Adam... by Tullio Lombardo : a stunning restoration project

Today's technology can do miracles to repair broken art pieces, like what happened to the Italian Renaissance masterpiece 'Adam' from Tullio Lombardo, in 2002. Indeed the wood base of the sculpture broke one night, and the sculpture exploded in 28 large pieces together with hundreds of smaller ones. It took 12 years to restore this life-size marble sculpture.

Tullio Lombardo (1455-1532) sculpted this Adam, with his father and brother, as part of the Venetian Doge Andrea Verdamin's tomb, around 1490. The Lombardo family was famous and sculpted several chrches and tombs.

A new sculpture gallery was created to unveil the restoration result, and to display other Venetian and Northern Italy sculptures.                             

Various videos (see below) show us the complex techniques used by the Metropolitan Museum experts to master that restoration project, and the time-lapse video is impressive!

Other sources:
www.metmuseum.org
thecultureconcept.com