Louis XIV as a Roman General

Artist Francois Girardon (French, 1628 - 1715)

Date1680

MediumBronze

DimensionsOverall: 43 × 44 × 31 1/2 inches (109.22 × 111.76 × 80.01 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number54-32

SignedRight front of base: "GIRARDON 1680"

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

The Century of Mozart, The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 15-March 4, 1956, no. 43, as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

Heads of State and Some Friends, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, January 4-February 6, 1983, no. 14, as Louis XIV.

Gallery Label

This heroic equestrian portrait of Louis XIV is a reduced version of a colossal monument that once stood in the Place Louis-le-Grand (now the Place Vendôme) in Paris. The work is influenced by a famous statue of the 2nd-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (below, right). The French monarch appears dressed in antique armor and mounted on his horse without the aid of stirrups. The stately gait of his horse as it tramples the weapons of his defeated enemy proclaims his military prowess. Such a glorification of the monarchy led to the destruction of the original monument during the French Revolution.

Provenance

Possibly Abel François Poisson, Marquis de Marigny (1727-1781), by 1781;

Sir Merton Russell-Cotes (1835-1921), Bournemouth, England;

Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York, stock nos. 30708 and 24469, by May 1907-September 10, 1921 [1];

With Duveen Brothers, New York, by June 11, 1947-May 1954 [2];

Purchased from Duveen Brothers, Inc. by The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum of Art, 1954.

NOTES:

[1] Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Duveen Brothers Records, London stock book 18.

[2] Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Duveen Brothers Records, Files regarding works of art: Girardon, Louis XIV, bronze bust.

Published References

Lida L[ouise] Fleitmann, The Horse in Art: From Primitive Times to the Present (New York: William Farquhar Payson, 1931), 255.

Ars in Urbe, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1953), unpaginated.

“New Acquisition,” Gallery News (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) vol. 22, no. 1 (October 1954): unpaginated, (repro.), as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

“New Statue in Gallery Collection,” Kansas City Star (October 1, 1954): unpaginated, (repro.).

“The Century of Mozart,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) vol. 1, no. 1 (January 1956): 28, (repro.), as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 102, 109, (repro.), as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

Hans R. Weihrauch, Europäische Bronzestatuetten: 15.-18. Jahrhundert (Braunschweig, Germany: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1967), 403.

History of the English Speaking Peoples, no. 61 (1970): unpaginated, (repro.), as an equestrian statue of Louis XIV, King of France.

Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. (Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 1971), 369-70.

Ralph T. Coe, “Small European Sculptures,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 49 [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 49], (repro.), as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

Jennifer Montagu, Bronzes (Portland, OR: Octopus Books, 1972), 79.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 108, 129, as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

François Souchal, “La Collection du sculpteur Girardon d’après son inventaire après décès,” Gazette des beaux-arts 82, no. 115 (1973): 34.

Victor Beyer, La Sculpture Française du XVII^esiècle au musée du Louvre (Santa Fe, Argentina: Gráfica Gutenberg, 1977), unpaginated.

François Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17^th and 18^th centuries: The reign of Louis XIV; Illustrated Catalogue: G-L (Oxford: Cassirer, 1981), 55.

Roger B. Ward, Heads of State and Some Friends, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum), 6, 16, (repro.), as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

Walter Liedtke, The Royal Horse and Rider: Painting, Sculpture, and Horsemanship, 1500-1800 (Norwalk, CT: Abaris Books, 1989), 286.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 173, 412, (repro.), as Louis XIV as an Augustan General.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 82.

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