This magisterial group is full of triumphant, composed elegance, epitomizing the era of Louis XIV. Apollo stands balletically on the cowering python, his left foot on the python’s back and his right foot balanced on the tail, curling out behind. He looks down impassively, his right arm raised effortlessly, and his lyre nestled in his left arm. The imaginary wind that ruffles the loose drapery around his perfect body blows through his luxuriant hair. The drama is staged as a formal dance in which beauty is victorious over the gruesome monster.

This Apollo and the Python was the inspiration for a drawing attributed to Jean Bérain (1640-1711) in the Morgan Library and Museum (fig. 1), dated around 1700-1710. Apollo is shown in a grandiose chariot pulled by four horses led by winged female figures. Bérain was the dessinateur du cabinet du roi from 1674 until he death in 1711, which provides a terminus ante quem for the bronze. Bérain's composition was made into a tapestry, woven in Erlangen from 1734 to 1740 by Jean Dechasaux le jeune and is now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (inv. 93.589).

The bronze finds its closest stylistic parallels in the oeuvre of Philippe Bertrand and his circle, who were active around 1700. Apollo’s perfect anatomy and grand gesture can be compared with the model of The Birth of Venus, (fig. 2) attributed to the circle of Bertrand, such as the cast in the Wallace Collection (inv. S195). Note in particular the pose of Zephyr rising weightlessly behind Venus, his left arm raised, whilst she aloofly looks down at an infant mermaid with the same indifference as our Apollo. These same compositional elements are repeated in Bertrand’s group of The Abduction of Psyche in the Royal Collection. Here Mercury’s pose is virtually a mirror image of Apollo’s in the present group.

The sculptor of this Apollo and the Python, however, gives much more attention to the intricate chasing of the bronze than is seen in the work of Bertrand. This is particularly apparent in the precision of the finishing in the python’s tail and in Apollo’s hair. It is a sumptuous bronze fit for the grandest collection.

According to family tradition, this bronze was part of the important collection of works of art formed by Jean-Baptiste de Machault (1701-1794). Machault (fig. 3) was an influential French statesman who held a succession of government offices, becoming Intendant of Hainaut from 1743 to 1745. In 1745, Louis XV appointed him to the key role of Controller General of Finances. Soon after, Machault instituted a tax on all metal objects containing copper, which were required to be marked with the crowned ‘C’. This official stamp, used between 1745 and 1749, appears on the reverse of the present bronze. It does not determine when the bronze was cast, but rather when it was sold. Machault’s overhaul of the direct tax system in 1749 was intended to be a fairer system than the old tax of a tenth and was intended to be applied equally to the church and nobility, but fierce opposition from the establishment forced Machault to abandon his reforms, which if they had been successfully implemented may have done much to prevent the later Revolutionary movement. In 1754 he relinquished the Controllership to become the Naval Minister, three years later decided to retire, although he remained a close advisor to the King. During the French Revolution, he was stripped of his property and was sent to prison by the Revolutionaries, where he died in 1794 at the age of ninety-three. His château remained unfinished and passed to Count Choiseul d’Aillecourt, who sold it to Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild in 1872.

When his father died in 1750, Charles-Henri-Louis de Machault inherited the lands of Arnouville (Val d’Oise) and commissioned the architect Constant d’Ivry (1752-1760) to build the Château d’Arnouville. Over the next ten years, he formed an important collection adding to the works he inherited from his father and grandfather, including fabulous furniture, sourced from the antique dealer Thomas Joachim Hébert, sumptuous tapestries and ormolu mounted porcelain and sculpture, which are considered today amongst the most important masterpieces of French 18th century art. Such works included the precious gift that Machault received from Madame de Pompadour, which she had in turn acquired from Lazare Duvaux in 1755: ‘un grand vase couvert de porcelaine celadon en bas-relief garni de bronze doré d’or moulu: 1500 livres’ , sold Sotheby’s Paris, 23 June 2004, lot 58. Louis XVI also gave him a series of six important tapestries illustrating the story of Don Quixote in 1783, sold Sotheby’s Paris, 18 December 2001, lot 327.

Confirmation that our Apollo was prominently displayed in the Château d’Arnouville is provided by Pruchnicki (op. cit. fig. 4) who illustrates a photograph of this Apollo bronze on a famous commode attributed to Bernard van Risen Burgh I, commissioned by Louis-Charles de Machault (1667-1750) and sold Christie’s Paris, 10 December, 2008, lot 11. Other notable sculpture in the collection included Giovanni Francesco’s Susini’s Abduction of Helen by Paris, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, which has a comparable Rocaille base (fig. 5), and probably a fine pair of bronzes by Ferdinando Tacca of Hercules and Iole and Roger and Angelica (fig. 6), both of which have identical ormolu bases, sold Drouot Paris, 3 December 1987.

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The reign of Louis XIV, vol. II, p. 73, no. 99; R. Wenley, French Bronzes in the Wallace Collection, London, 2002, pp. 54-57 (for the bases), and pp. 66-7; X. Salmon, Madame de Pompadour et les Arts, Versailles, 2002; G. Bresc-Bautier, G. Scherf & J. Draper, Cast in Bronze : French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, Paris, 2009, pp. 394-5; V. Pruchnicki, Arnouville. Le Château des Machault au XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 2013.