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Title:
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The Children of Ernest de Talleyrand Perigord
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Artist: |
Baron Carlo Marochetti
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This group, in a French private collection, consists of a fashionably dressed boy with one hand on his hip, and behind him a girl of similar age, beside but slightly behind him, with both her hands resting on his right shoulder. They are on a roughly circular base with the arms of the Talleyrand Perigord family in high relief at the front. Beneath the feet of the little girl is an ivy plant. The magazine L'Artiste (second series, vol.VI, 1840, p.374) reports that Marochetti has just executed "a charming group, the two children of Count Auguste de Talleyrand, two exquisite heads full of laughter, in modern costume, modelled with extreme taste and the most graceful compositional sense, executed with all that delicacy and flexibility of touch, which one is pleased to encounter in the talent of this eminent artist". This description seems to be a bit off the mark in two respects. To begin with, Count Auguste de Talleyrand died in 1832, at a fairly advanced age, and would not, in 1840, have had any children of this age. The children portrayed here are in fact his grandchildren. The girl is the older of the two, Marie-Louise-Marguerite, who was born in 1832, and would later marry Henri Prince de Ligne. The boy is her brother, Marie-Archambaud, born almost exactly a year after his sister. The author of the article also seems to misread the mood of the work, describing the faces of the children as "rieuses", or of full of laughter. The boy looks proud and somewhat aloof, and his sister has a sad and thoughtful expression. It seems, in fact, that the group was conceived as a sort of memorial. When this author saw the group, he was informed by its then owner that, at the time Marochetti created it, the boy had already died in infancy. So the group is a commemorative one, and records the attachment of the two children, the ivy carved on the base symbolizing this attachement. (I am grateful to Caroline Hedengren Dillon for help with this entry)
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Material(s): |
Marble
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Medium: |
Unassigned |
Finish: |
- |
Technique: |
Carved |
Genre: |
Unassigned
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Colours: |
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Year: |
1840 |
Height: |
0 metres |
Width: |
0 metres |
Depth: |
0 metres |
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Key: |
5767 |
Acc. No.: |
5767 |
Col. No.: |
5767 |
Number of views: |
2677 |
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