terracotta sphinx, XIXe

Sphinx with a woman's head in large terracotta in the late Louis XV style - early Louis XVI (between 1770 and 1776). This one presents a female torso with a push-up bodice, wearing a sleeveless hooded dress called "domino", and a "child's" hairstyle, with domed hair and crepe on the front and raised at the back by a ribbon. The mythological creature, whose two legs rest on a tasselled cushion, wears a medallion in the shape of a curved heart around its neck, establishing a reminder with the similar ornaments of the fabric draping the croup transversely.
 
In one of his paintings representing the young Moses saved from the waters (1638), Nicolas Poussin endows the traditional figure of the sphinx with a woman's head. In this sense, the Atticist painter, cantor of the dreamed Arcadia, reduces the miraculous survival of the chosen child of God to the triumph over the destruction of life, water, the personified Nile, on which the symbolic double of the sphinx in ancient statuary. A mythological animal with the body of a lion and a human head, formerly emblematic of hieroglyphic writing but still feared even in its chimerical existence, the sphinx can thus appear both as the insidious spirit which denies everything (cf. Oedipus) but also as a tutelary figure, protective and vigilant in its enigmatic power.
 
The sphinx in question here takes on a significance representative of the evolution of the meaning attributed to it in statuary art from the XVIIe: at first ambivalent, conducive to arousing dread and strangeness, she becomes reassuring and benevolent, always draped in a mysterious silence which she does not depart from to mount an inflexible guard in front of noble residences, or at the he edge of a park: its power is transfigured in stone, it represents the eternal, despotic and paternal sovereign.
 
The sculpture that interests us is in fact situated at the confluence of a political manifesto and an aesthetic discourse: among the first sculptures of sphinxes known in France, dating from the end of the XVIIe, some, four in number, seem to sport the features of several favorites of King Louis XIV (1). Hairstyled à la Fontange – one of the last and ephemeral mistresses of the monarch – they deploy, lying down, bare chest, the grace and restraint of the favor obtained. Likewise, our sculpture crystallizes a skilful synthesis of a certain elegance of interpersonal skills – and self-segregation, whose chosen place in the XVIIIth century is eloquent. : parks, especially royal and princely ones. If the most famous sphinxes of XVIIIth which have come down to us to this day remain those enthroned at the top of the grand staircase of the park of the Château de Ménars (Loir-et-Cher), represent the Marquise de Pompadour, (2) it is that the latter, not content with having reigned over the influence of Decorative Arts at the court under Louis XV, breathed timeless life into his own model of favorite philosopher and protector of the Enlightenment through a number of artistic achievements – in stone.
 
What identity then takes on this sphinx with the mysterious ribbon tied around her neck? The pendant, in the shape of a medallion and with the figure of a heart, is probably a reliquary of love, and, containing some ardent memory, could evoke another chosen one of the heart of Louis XV whose last years she shared until 1774: the Countess du Barry (3). If certain sculptures of sphinxes present similarities between them, there is none which offers a complete bundle of identical characteristics. (4)
 
Hence the exclusive dimension of the sculpture in question: the delicacy of the quarter-turned head, uncommon before 1770, the skilful elaboration of a storied hairstyle, the haughty movement with which the impenetrable and smiling figure seems moved. , everything contributes to a natural majesty befitting the art of Western gardens from the Renaissance, and in this case the XVIIIth century. Last question however: its destination and its original location. An enigma, just like the strangeness of its charm remains, in a supernatural mute, complete. (5)

RELATED WORK:
1. Four white marble sphinxes with female heads; presumed portraits of mistresses of Louis XIV; they are represented lying down, the body partly covered by a drapery decorated with tassels and held on the chest by a ribbon bow. Beginning of XVIIIth century. (H. 80 – L. 100 – Width. 40 cm). Provenance: Château in Brittany, Château de Royaumont then Château de Chantilly. Sale of May 8, 1901 at Drouot.
2. Pair of “Pompadour” sphinxes, Park and Castle of Ménars (Loir-et-Cher).
3. Pair of terracotta child sphinxes, mid-century XVIIIe. (H. 75 – W. 90 – D. 45 cm) Provenance: Sotheby's sale December 2008.
4. Pair of Sèvres biscuit sphinxes representing the Comtesse du Barry, circa 1780 (L.10 – D.16 – H.14cm).
5. Sphinxes in the Park of Chiswick House, Burlington Lane, West London, circa 1730. Photograph: Derry Moore.
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
• Dictionary of costume and its accessories, weapons and fabrics from the origins to the present day by LELOIR, M., Paris, SPADEM and Librairie Gründ, 1992, p. 97.
• Madame de Pompadour and the arts, exhibition catalogue, under the dir. by Xavier Salmon, Versailles, National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles and Trianon, February 14 – May 19, 2002, Paris, RMN, 2002.
• FURCY-RAYNAUD, “Inventory of sculptures executed in XVIIIth century by the direction of the king's buildings", Archives of French art, volume XIV, Paris, 1927.