The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 22
BARTHÉLEMY PRIEUR (c. 1536–1611)
5
France, c. 1600
Hermes (also known as The Belvedere Antinoüs)
After the Antique
Bronze
23 cm (9 in.) high
10 cm (4 in.) wide
provenance
Private collection, United Kingdom
A promising young sculptor with a prodigious talent, Barthélemy Prieur was
drawn to the Italian peninsula to further his studies, where it is known that he was
in Rome as early as the 1550s, presumably after having finished his initial training
in France (Seelig-Teuwen, 2008, pp. 102–03). Prieur has been identified with the
sculptor ‘Bartolomeo’ who was working alongside Ponce Jacquio (active 1527–72)
on the decorations of the Ricci-Sacchetti palace in Via Giulia (Radcliffe 1993, pp.
275–76). Whilst his Roman activities remain scarcely documented, it has been
suggested that in the 1550s he took part in the large stucco projects organized
under the direction of Daniele da Volterra and Giulio Mazzoni; in the later works,
his remarkable skill in the use of soft materials such as wax and clay for the models
for his bronzes may indeed reflect his activity as a stuccoist (Seelig-Teuwen 2008,
p. 102). After several years in Rome, he moved to Turin, capital of the flourishing
duchy of Savoy, where his presence is attested in October 1564. There, he became
court sculptor to Duke Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy (1528–1580), specializing in
monumental bronze projects (Seelig-Teuwen 1993, pp. 365–85). Drawing on his
time spent in Rome with Jacquio, Prieur initiated and influenced the development
of the small bronze statuette genre in France during the sixteenth, seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries (Warren 2010, p. 22).
Prieur had returned to Paris by the time of his marriage to Marguerite
Dalencourt on 27 September 1571 and was recorded to have made some small-scale
bronzes by 1583 (Grodecki 1986, pp. 129–33). When King Henri IV of France (1553–
1610) came to the throne in 1589, he clearly took a liking to Prieur’s small bronze
statuettes. Realising the enormous monarchical propaganda potential that these
works would have had, he appointed Prieur to the coveted post of sculpteur du
roi five years later. In this capacity, he is known to have made reliefs for the Petite
Galerie of the Louvre around 1594, alongside restoring certain antique statues for
the King.
The scale, sculpting, facture and colour of the present bronze all point towards
the full authorship of Barthélemy Prieur. What is interesting to note is the
idiosyncratic manner in which Prieur models the facial features, especially the
eyes, so as to try and represent ancient ideals and proportions; yet, inevitably, in
