Louis Prudhomme (1752–1830), French journalist and pamphleteer
Medium
Bronze, cast - single
Dimensions
Diameter: 5 3/8 in. (13.7 cm)
Classification
Medals and Plaquettes
Culture
French
Department
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Samuel P. Avery, 1898
Accession Number
98.7.37
Tags
Art Historical Context
This exquisite bronze medal, created by the renowned French sculptor Pierre-Jean David d'Angers in 1828, portrays Louis Prudhomme (1752–1830), a prominent journalist and pamphleteer the French Revolution. Measuring just 5⅜ inches in diameter, it exemplifies the intimate art of medallic portraiture, a specialty of David d'Angers, who was a leading Romantic sculptor celebrated for his precise, character-revealing profiles of intellectuals, revolutionaries, and statesmen. Cast as a single piece, its tactile bronze surface captures Prudhomme's dignified profile with remarkable fidelity, evoking th...
About the Artist
Pierre Jean David d'Angers · 1788–1856
Pierre-Jean David d'Angers, born on March 12, 1788, in Angers, France, to a wood carver and ornamental sculptor father who had fought in the Republican army, began his artistic training locally under Marchand and Jean-Jacques Delusse at the École centrale d'Angers from 1806 to 1807. In 1808, he arrived in Paris with scant funds and entered the studio of Philippe-Laurent Roland, later working under...