Follower of François Duquesnoy

Crushing an all’antica helmet under her foot and holding an olive branch in her left hand, this Allegory of Peace, finely modelled in terracotta, illustrates the influence of François Duquesnoy on Roman artists of the seventeenth century. The cupid at the feet of the female figure clearly evokes one of the motifs that made the Flemish sculptor famous. With his round-cheeked features and his posture, awkwardly holding the lictor’s fasces (fascio littorio), the putto evokes the canon developed by Duquesnoy in his famous children’s Bacchanalia. One of the rare autograph examples of a terracotta by Duquesnoy, in Ecouen, nevertheless reveals a different manner of working the clay, in which the marks of the sculptor’s tool are not visible in the hair (inv. no. Cl 1256).

The complex, sinuous treatment of Peace’s drapery, as well as her posture, evoke the Santa Susanna in Santa Maria di Loreto (Rome), completed by Duquesnoy in 1533. Symbolizing the return to classicism in Rome in about 1530, Susanna demonstrates that Roman artists had an understanding of classical sculpture, such as the Urania in the Musei Capitolini and the Mattei Ceres in the Vatican. As in the case of the Ceres, the present figure’s arms are skilfully enveloped in drapery, gracefully revealing her left shoulder. Finally, Duquesnoy’s bust of the Virgin, widely copied in the seventeenth century, is recalled in the turn of the present figure’s head, in her face, with its straight nose stretching in an uninterrupted line to meet the arch of her eyebrows, and in her hair, knotted at the nape of her neck.

RELATED LITERATURE

M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris, 2005, pp. 129-135, 218, 237-238 & 318.

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