Satyr with Flute
Musée Cluny, Paris
Our meaning may be illustrated from the history of the tomb of the Marshal de Saxe in the church of St. Thomas, at Strasbourg. It was designed in 1756, by Jean Baptiste Pigalle—then the foremost sculptor in France.
Marshal de Saxe was, of course, the victor at Fontenoy, and Pigalle depicts Death welcoming the hero while France vainly attempts to stay Death’s hand. The scattered trophies, as well as the Austrian eagle, the Belgian lion, and the English leopard, speak of the Marshal’s success as a soldier. The work is clearly a national memorial, and, had it been the work of a great national sculptor, would have suggested national feeling and pride in every line and mass. In point of fact it is evident that it does nothing of the kind. The sculptor, finding himself unable to feel the design as a whole, has been content with “building up” the memorial. Being a competent craftsman he naturally produced a satisfactory, if uninspired, work.
There is a quaint little story concerning the inception of the Saxe Memorial which happily illustrates the mood in which Pigalle designed the work. The Marshal’s reputation for gallantry was by no means confined to military affairs. He was, perhaps, the only commander who ever entered into a campaign accompanied by a first-rate opera company. Pigalle was well aware of this. That no side of the dead commander’s character might be unrepresented, he added the figure of Love with torch reversed. “The Marshal cared equally for love and war. Love must figure among the mourners,” he explained. The Marshal’s friend objected, and finally Louis XV. was asked to intervene. To satisfy all parties, the King decreed that Cupid should wear a helmet—“the insignia of the genius of war,” as he explained. But Pigalle was not to be moved, “Aujourd’hui,” he said; “je plie, mais je me redresserai bientot.”
It will be seen that Pigalle proved right. To this day Love is without his helmet. Moreover, the tiny god is perhaps the most charming figure in the great monument, a lasting reminder that the genius of the eighteenth-century sculptor dealt more naturally with the dainty and the graceful than with the great and the sublime. Pigalle’s own reputation depends much more upon his charming “Mercury putting on his Sandal” (The Louvre) than it does upon the far more ambitious memorial at Strasbourg. This is equivalent to saying that Pigalle was at his best when he was most interested. The same remark applies to his fellow sculptors. Seeing that men’s interests had moved in the direction of the boudoir, a boudoir art naturally followed.
The demand for smaller works increased as the eighteenth century went on. No sculptor reached the height attained by Watteau and Fragonard in the sister art of painting, but an immense amount of fine sculpture was produced.
The typical Louis Quinze and Louis Seize style is well represented by the work of the Parisian sculptor, Etienne Maurice Falconet (1716-1791), a pupil of Lemoyne. His “L’amour Menaçant” is a charming instance of the skill with which the eighteenth-century sculptors adapted themselves to the wider range of subjects created by the new demand.
HOUDON