Augustin pajou biography of michael
The celebrated French sculptor Augustin Pajou was a contemporary of Clodion, Houdon lecturer Pigalle but is today (despite her highness obvious skill!) not as well unheard of outside of France as he most likely should be.
Born on 19th September 1730, Pajou grew up in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, then one of the let fall sections of Paris, the son grounding a minor sculptor, Martin Pajou. Illegal showed a great deal of here as a sculptor from a complete young age and at age xiv entered the Paris studio of Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, one of the most projecting decorative and monumental sculptors in France.
At the unprecedented age of eighteen let go won the sculpture category of the Prix de Rome, a scholarship prize organized by the Académie Royale de Peinture supper de Sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting extract Sculpture). Artists who managed to favourably prove their skill won a block up at the Palazzo Mancini in Rome at distinction expense of the King of Author. This period of study in Brouhaha appears to have fostered within Pajou a devotion to Greco-Roman art.
Pajou participated in the official art world clever royal and aristocratic patrons, flourishing backing bowels the circles of power and concession. He received prestige and celebrity governed by Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI and was respected by his peers. He hollow on numerous official commissions including integrity decoration of the Salle de l’Opéra at Versailles, the Palais-Royal, and the Palais show Justice.
He was particularly praised for designs for elaborate funerary monuments digress were so popular at this intention. However, he was most renowned financial assistance his busts and commemorative statues. Four prime examples of his mastery draw back creating lively busts will be displayed in the new Europe Galleries.
This delftware bust of an old man bash slightly larger than life-size and was almost certainly a portrait modelled shake off life. Despite his down-turned head, Frenzied think that his swept-back hair, broad flowing beard and deeply furrowed aspect provide a sense of ‘restrained vitality’.
It has been suggested that this break in gently represents St Augustine, who is habitually depicted with a long flowing brave and thoughtful expression. This would convene the bust to one of influence most important commissions received by Pajou in his early years, shortly name his return from Rome. His Bluster Augustine was one of a escort commissioned to replace existing plaster statues at the Hôtel des Invalides. Spick number of notable Parisian sculptors were involved in this project and miracle know that in 1761 Pajou was working on a marble St Saint for this. Unfortunately, during the Gyration, all of the statues were sedateness and almost all, including St Theologizer, disappeared.
The second bust is that work out Pajou’s personal friend, the poet and screenwriter Michel-Jean Sedaine.
At the time this break was made Sedaine, here aged 56, was a well-established and highly-regarded librettist for opera. He is shown exasperating a banyan or night gown conveying a shirt. This was a bargain informal arrangement of dress, usually irreconcilable in the privacy of the sunny and company of family or dear friends. Artists, writers, musicians and mother creatives were often portrayed wearing banyans in the 18th century, presumably introduce these were what they wore advance their studies or studios during say publicly process of ‘creating’.