Barthélemy Prieur

Jacques Kugel, Paris;

With Galerie Antony Embden, Paris;

From whom acquired by Pierre Bergé;

His sale, Sotheby's Paris, 31 October 2018, lot 15;

Where acquired by Antony Embden;

His sale, Sotheby's Paris, 14 June 2022, lot 12

This fine pair of bronze busts depicting Henri IV and his queen, Marie de'Medici, in all'antica dress, relates closely to versions of the same models in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (inv. nos. 81.22.1 and 81.22.2). Though formerly attributed to Barthélemy Prieur's son-in-law, the medallist Guillaume Dupré (1574-1642), scholarly consensus now considers them to be by Prieur's hand. Several small portrait busts of the king and queen appear in the inventory drawn up after Prieur's death in 1611. Prieur's presumed authorship of the bronze busts is further underscored by their close resemblance to the heads of the sculptor's statuettes of Henri IV as Jupiter and Marie de'Medici as Juno in the Louvre (inv. nos. OA 11054 and 11055). Other casts of the busts are found in the Musée National du Château de Pau (on loan from the Louvre), and in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (only Henri IV).

RELATED LITERATURE

G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf, Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Musée du Louvre, Paris, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2008-2009, pp. 126-127, nos. 23 and 24