A cookie, Madame Du Barry as a sphinx, early 19th century
A cookie, Madame Du Barry as a sphinx, early 19th century
3.800,00 €
The sphinx is the feminine form of the Sphinx
and her representations go back to Antiquity.
This lion-bodied woman most often appears in statues and sculptures, and more recently in paintings and literature.
She is the synthesis of strength, power and prudence.
She also embodies feminine mystery and seduction.
The earliest known sphinges sculptures in France,
date from the late 17th century,
and some of them, in the guise of favorites of King Louis XIV.
The tradition continued with Madame du Barry and Marie-Antoinette.
Further information
| Dimensions | 14 × 7 × 12 cm |
|---|
Countess Du BARRY
1743-1793
It was through Richelieu that Louis XV,
then widowed and having just lost his son,
met Jeanne Bécu,
who was hastily married to the Comte du Barry, to "save propriety".
She quickly became the king's great favorite
and impose her style on the court.
A patron of the arts and letters :
"Jeanne is a woman of the Enlightenment.
She embodies the contradictions of her time, between representation and intimacy,
morality and libertinism.
She observed codes and customs in public, yet was natural in private.
She composes between convenience and freedom".
Until her death, she collected frenetically.
Her Louveciennes was a veritable collector's gallery, a hodgepodge of goldsmiths' and silversmiths' pieces,
sculptures, paintings, antiques...
Because she represented everything the Revolution hated: a former royal mistress, a woman, the pleasures of life and freedom, she was imprisoned before being guillotined on December 8, 1793.
