lMarochetti received the commission for the sculpture on this altar from the Ministry of the Interior on 30 June 1834. The decoration of Pierre Vignon's Temple de la Gloire, which, even within the First Empire had reverted, with Napoleon's sanction, to the functions of a christian church, was to be one of the most significant monumental projects of the July Monarchy. During the Bourbon Restoration it had initially been intended to use the building as an expiatory church, and within the programme then proposed, the figure of the repentant Magdalen was to have figured as a symbol of France deploring the crimes of the Revolution. However, these functions were in the end transferred to the nearby Chapelle Expiatoire, and the Church of La Madeleine became instead a vehicle for the projection of a traditional and somewhat bourgeois Christian morality, dictated by the state bureaucracy.The church's coherent iconographic programme incorporated, in the pediment of the West front and the high altar, visual references to the saint to whom the church was dedicated. The West doors, the work of Henri de Triqueti, illustrate the Ten Commandments, each panel containing a biblical event exemplifying one of the commandments. On entering the church, to left and right, the sacraments of baptism and marriage are illustrated in sculptural groups, a Marriage of the Virgin by James Pradier, and The Baptism of Christ by François Rude. Statues of Saints were commissioned for the side niches both of the exterior and the interior, and delicately carved angels were created by Antonin Moine for the holy water stoups. The reliquaries, containing the supposed bones of Mary Magdalen, were decorated with figures by Auguste Préault and Alexandre Schoenewerk.
The order of 30 June 1834 specifies that, apart from the principal group of the Exaltation de Ste. Madeleine, Marochetti should execute the two figures of angels to flank the group, and in general terms "les autres sculptures en marbre de cet autel". No mention is made specifically of the altar frontal with its relief of Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee. Marochetti is also directed to provide the models for the tabernacle and the chandeliers, to be executed in bronze for the altar. He was to liaise over the proportions and the decorative detail of his sculptures with J.-J.-M. Huvé, who had taken over from Vignon as architect of the building in 1828. The order is signed by Edmond Cavé, Director of the Fine Arts in the Ministry, but it is perhaps significant that Adolphe Thiers, always a keen supporter of Marochetti, was Minister of the Interior at this time.
In the Autumn and Winter of 1834, arrangements were made for Marochetti to take over, for the creation of his Madeleine sculptures, the studio on the Ile des Cygnes in Paris, which had recently been used by the sculptor Augustin Dumont to create the colossal Génie de la Liberté, for the summit of the July Column in the Place de la Bastille. Early in October 1839, Henry Greville, attache at the British Embassy in Paris visited Marochetti's home at Vaux and was shown models for the Madeleine altar, some parts of which he thought "very good". (Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville, ed.Viscountess Enfield, London 1883, vol.I p.138). The following spring, the main elements of the high altar, the central group and the two flanking angels in plaster, were ready to be tried out in situ. On 19 May 1840, Huvé, wrote to Cavé, telling him of his intention to create an adjustable support for the sculptures, which could be raised or lowered until the correct position was found. Even then, Marochetti was not content with all of his figures, writing to explain to the Minister of the Interior, on 5 Sept. 1841, that he had been forced to remodel his main group and the Anges Adorateurs. One of the angels had required three different attempts. He excused himself for these delays on the grounds that this was a very important commission, and that he wanted to do everything in his power to make it worthy of its site.
Towards the end of 1840 the Conseil de Fabrique of the Madeleine petitioned the Director of Fine Arts to have the sculptures suppressed or removed to some other destination. It did so on the grounds that the group unnecessarily replicated the imagery of the apsidal paintings by Jules-Claude Ziegler, that its iconography was eccentric, and that it would have an unfortunate effect on the acoustic, reducing the effect of chanting in the chancel area. The cause of the council was supported by Frédéric Mercey, Minister for Public Works, but the Minister of the Interior, Charles-Marie-Tannneguy Duchâtel, himself visited the studio and was favourably impressed by Marochetti's sculptures, insisting that it would be an unprecedented act to cancel a work of such undeniable interest, to satisfy a certain number of critics. G. Laviron, writing in the journal L'Artiste in 1841 (2nd series, vol.VIII, 22nd issue, p.341) wondered what stage Marochetti had reached with his work, and reported that sundry fragments of the trial model were lying about in the church. However, shortly after this, Marochetti, "with a perfectly good grace" invited Laviron to visit the Ile des Cygnes, to inspect the work in progress. He found there eight carvers, who had been at work already for six months on a colossal composition, which Laviron described as "very simple, and at the same time very suitable". It was something which, he claimed, the most renowned sculptors would have envied, and he claimed that even Michelangelo had never been charged with a sculpture "d'un semblable developpement", the central group being eighteen feet in height. The delay had been caused, he said by the difficulty in finding the right blocks of marble. (L'Artiste, 1841, 2nd series, vol.VIII, 26th issue). In its number for 16 July 1843, the Journal des Artistes. Revue Pittoresque (XVIIe serie, Vol. II, No.3, p.48) reported that Marochetti had completed work on the marble sculptures, and on 26 July 1843, Marochetti wrote to tell the Minister that the sculptures had been placed in the church, but that he hoped to be able to continue working on them there. The final payment to the sculptor was agreed on 16 Jan.1844. His total payment for the work was 150,000 francs.
A critic writing in Le Mercure des Théâtres, and signing himself "a friend of the arts" appeared at first to give his approval to the work, saying that "a great wealth of wings, draperies and billowing hair gives this group an agreeable aspect", but went on to add that it would look good reduced to small dimensions on the mantelpiece of one of the penitents of the rue de Breda (reformed prostitutes). Marochetti, the critic claimed, was, before being a sculptor,a man of the world, and he had not bothered himself to think what might be the true nature of art in the nineteenth century. He had sought "a success which was facile and assured", by flattering the taste of his audience, but this was not likely to lead an artist along "the elevated, improving and philosophical route of art".
A certain Courtois, who may well be the sculptor of this name, wrote to the magazine Satan, describing the figure of the Magdalen on Marochetti's altar as a farm girl from the Limousin. He complained that the angels were making too much of an effort to support the Saint. "The angels who appear in assumptions and apotheoses are really not street-porters , sweating blood and water grappling with a burden, like people doing their best to earn a good tip". He ended up addressing the sculptor: "Monsieur Marochetti, epochs of decadence which have a sense of their own impotence, are easy to satisfy; thus you have only needed the support of M. Thiers and a passable warhorse [the reference here seems to be to the statue of Emmanuele Filiberto] to obtain a large proportion of all the current artistic commissions".For less than what had been spent on the marble of this altar, Courtois claimed that the government could have prevented the Magdalen of Antonio Canova from leaving France.
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