After Michel Anguier (1612-1686) French, 17th century

dark brown patina, the nude goddess standing in contra posto, a dolphin at her feet, her body slightly wrapped in a fine drapery, looking down to her raised left hand holding a crayfish

Anguier's model of Amphitrite is one of six Olympian Gods the sculptor modelled in 1652, following his return from Rome. Louis XIV's jeweller, the collector Pierre Le Tessier de Montarsy (1647-1710), owned and probably commissioned them. In his 'Mémoires inédits' of Anguier delivered to the French Academy in 1690, Guillet de Saint Georges records that  Monsieur Anguier fut occupé en 1652 aux modèles de six figures, chacune to 18 pouces qui ont étés jetés en bronze et qui représentent un Jupiter foudroyant, une Junon jalouse, un Neptune agité, une Amphitrite tranquille, un Pluton mélancolpique, un Mars qui quitte ses armes et une Cérès éplorée. This description reveals that Anguier intended his deities to be represented by a hierarchy of emotions. The sculptor conceived them as three mythological couples, each with distinctive temperaments characterized by one of the four elements : Amphitrite and Neptune (water), Ceres and Pluto (earth), Juno and Jupiter (air). Anguier would even give a lecture about them in the Academie Royal in Paris in 1676 where he described the sea goddess Amphitrite tranquille as 'fraîche, délicate, claire et transparente, son visage agréable et tout le reste de son  corps de mesme...ses drapperies seront amples delicattes et ondées...'.

Between 1654 and 1658, Anguier executed another series of these deities as life-size stone figures for Nicolas Fouquet, Surintendant des Finances, to be placed in the Château de Saint Mandé. Of the series of fourteen, four have survived, the life-size Amphitrite is today in the Institute of Art in Toledo.

The set of six bronzes was sold in 1689 to Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1651-1710) and the earliest record of individual bronzes after these models are the Amphitrite, Jupiter and Juno given in 1693 by Le Notre to Louis XIV (now in the Louvre). The models had a great success at the time, and besides Louis XIV and the Grand Dauphin, also the sculptor François Girardon (1710) and Pierre Crozat owned bronze versions in their collections. Furthermore, in 1699, Raymond le Plat ( 1644-1742) acquired in Paris two bronzes of Amphitrite for Augustus the Strong of Saxony: one smaller version paired with Bacchus (now in the Green Vault Museum, Dresden), and a second one, of taller size, today in the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.

The present bronze compares well to the Hamburg and the Louvre versions. Amphitrite's hair is held with two bands running around the forehead, her svelte body is wrapped elegantly in the drapery, her head slightly turned to the right and curiously looking at the crayfish in her hand. The finely chiselled plinth is modelled in high relief to simulate flowing water, as can also be seen on the smaller Dresden model. Her left foot is standing on the dolphin's mouth, his body, partly hidden by the falling drapery. An almost identical bronze belonged to the Marius Paulme collection and was sold in Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, may 15, 1929, lot 267.

RELATED LITERATURE
Masterpieces from the Louvre. French bronzes and paintings from the renaissance to Rodin, ex. cat., Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, 1988, pp. 63-64 &155, no. 18; V.Krahn, Von Allen Seiten Schön, ex. cat, Berlin 1995 pp.568-569 nos. 218 and 219; Les Bronzes de la Couronne, ex.cat. Louvre, Paris, 1999, pp.130,133-134; G. Bresc-Bautier " Le Petit Bronze" Un temps d'exubérance. Les arts décoratifs sous Louis XIII et Anne d'Autriche, ex. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, April-July 2002, p. 427, no. 301b, and p. 431; P. Malgouyres, 'Sous l'Empire des passions. Entre colère et terreur', in Figures de la passion, ex. cat. musée de la musique, Paris, 2001-2002, p. 182- 185, fig. 54