The chosen sculptor was Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, the tercentenary of whose birth falls this coming January. But it was in his portraits that Pigalle showed his originality. His statue of a naked Voltaire could have been equally striking. He chose to present his subject as a classical nude, but without any idealisation, and there is much to admire in the rendering of the dynamic pose and the naturalism of the anatomy. Voltaire approved the head that Pigalle modelled in the eight days he spent at Ferney the body was created later using an old soldier as a model , but in the transfer from clay to marble, completed in , the likeness was lost and the head sits awkwardly on the body.
Moreover, the decision to depict Voltaire naked had drawn widespread condemnation almost from the start. D, 13 April A few days later he wrote to Marmontel expressing his unworthiness but also betraying his worry that other enemies would cause problems:.
OCV , vol. The project drew contributions from royalty and the stars of the world of literature, including even Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose two louis Voltaire spitefully refused to accept until his objections were finally worn down by his friends.
But it was all in vain. It is not clear if Voltaire ultimately recognised that the sculpture was an artistic failure, but he was certainly aware of the outcry against it at the time. On a more positive note, the time that Voltaire spent with Pigalle at Ferney gave the writer the technical information he needed to write his essay Fonte OCV vol.
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