£875
Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art | 588
Auction: 5 February 2020 at 10:00 GMT
traditionally depicted, previously mounted
Note: Pilon is famed for his allegorical figures in marble and bronze: first for the Tomb of King Francis I in the Abbey of St Denis, Paris; then, in 1559, the Monument for the heart of King Henri II, with a group of the Three Graces, the epitome of French Mannerist figure-sculpture; and, finally, the Tomb of King Henri II, again in St. Denis.
Prieur was a French follower as court sculptor of Pilon, working in stone and marble: he specialised in casting bronze statuettes in commercial series. Characteristic of Prieur’s many statuettes of young women – usually secular, nearly nude, classical nymphs – is the profile of the face such as is used here for the Virgin Mary: a high forehead, sloping back in an almost Grecian continuous line from a small nose, with a receding hairline, while small pursed lips appear above a daintily receding chin. Close too is the coiffure, where a plait of hair is wound round the crown of the head in a neat circle.
This group is not dissimilar from a figure of the Virgin alone (sometimes paired with a St John the Evangelist from under a Crucifix), of which three examples are known, and one of which was given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, after a sale at Sotheby’s in 1996.
Similarities between that figure and the present statuette in style, dress (especially the drapery on their backs) and physiognomy support a tentative attribution to the circle of practitioners around the two sculptors, though its treatment is not as refined as theirs normally is.