Philippe Bertrand

Bertrand's under-lifesize marble statue of the suicide of Lucretia was shown at the salon of 1704.^[1] (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Philippe Bertrand (1663–1724)^[2] was a French sculptor of the late 17th and early 18th century. He received commissions for sculptures for both the Château de Marly and Versailles. In November, 1701, he was made a full member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture upon the display of a royal commission of 1700,^[3] his small bronze of the Rape of Helen, a svelte composition of three figures with a debt to Giambologna's Rape of a Sabine Woman.^[4] He was known for sculpting flowing, graceful, and even flying figures, particularly in his bronzes.^[5]

In 1714, when the choir of Notre-Dame was refurbished in academic Baroque manner, in Louis XIV's fulfillment of a vow made by Louis XIII,^[6] Bertrand was commissioned to provide a small allegorical bronze as the prize for a poetry competition on the occasion, organised by the Académie française to celebrate the completion of the project; it is conserved in the Wallace Collection, London.^[7]

Two further small collectors' bronzes by Bertrand are in the Royal Collection, Psyche and Mercury and Prometheus Bound; they are characteristic purchases of George IV.^[8]

References

1. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc. no. 2003.296. "Recent acquisitions: a selection, 2003-2004", The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Fall 2004), p. 23 (illus.).
2. Bertrand's date of death is sometimes given as 1724, but just as often is given as 1704.
3. James David Draper, "Arms for Aeneas: A Group Reattributed to Jean Cornu", Metropolitan Museum Journal 24 (1989:223-237) p 233.
4. The bronze, 64.8cm tall, is conserved at the Musée de Fontainebleau; it is illustrated in Draper 1989, p. 232 fig. 17.
5. Levey, Michael (1995). Painting and Sculpture in France 1700-1789. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 80. ISBN 0-300-06494-2.
6. The decor, in which the prominent court sculptors of the period 1708–13 collaborated, was removed after the French Revolution, as inconsistent with the cathedral's Gothic interior and too redolent of the Ancien Régime (Wallace Collection website)
7. The Wallace Collection: Philippe Bertrand, Allegory commemorating the Accomplishment of the Vow of Louis XIII, 1714 (S176): The runner-up in the competition was the young Voltaire, who savaged the winner in an acerbic public letter.
8. The Royal Collection: Philippe Bertrand.