Case Study 5. One Commission, Two Sculptors, How Many Founders? A Technical Study of Three Renaissance Statues from the Monument of the Heart of Duke Anne de Montmorency

Introduction

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Commissioned in 1571, the Monument of the Heart of Duke Anne de Montmorency (French, 1493–1567), Constable of France, includes three bronze statues. These were made by two sculptors, Barthélémy Prieur (French, 1536–1611) and Martin Lefort (French, active 1562–82). In the archives, only one founder, Nicolas Péron, is associated with the casting of two of the statues. A technical investigation of the statues, including metal and core analysis and visual and radiographic examinations, was undertaken to discern whether Péron might have cast all three and to shed light on the relationship between the sculptors and the founder(s), which was crucial in this period of Renaissance bronze statuary.

The commission

In 1571, Madeleine of Savoy, Anne de Montmorency’s wife, commissioned the architect Jean Bullant (French, 1515–1578) to produce a funerary monument for the heart of her husband. The monument, now in the Louvre, is composed of a sculpted stone column that would originally have been topped by an urn containing the heart. Bronze allegorical personifications of Abundance, Peace, and Justice were situated around the base of the column as witnesses to the character of the deceased. Bullant charged two sculptors to produce the statues. Prieur was responsible for Abundance and Peace, and Lefort made Justice. Péron was commissioned to cast the statues by Prieur. There is no record of who cast Lefort’s.

The main questions

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• Considering the number of people who collaborated in the production of such sculptures (and there were no doubt more unnamed hands involved as well), can the physical evidence help clarify who was ultimately in charge of the production?

• Does the technical evidence suggest that the same founder or different ones worked with the two sculptors to cast the three sculptures?

• Can comparison of the casting processes used for each of the statues help answer these questions?

• What can the characterization and comparison of the materials used tell us with regard to these questions?

Visual evidence of lost-wax casting

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Clear traces of lost-wax casting can be found in the modeling of details such as the vine leaf and cornucopia held by Abundance. They reproduce the malleable quality of the original model’s material.

It is also clear from an examination of the inside of the sculptures that all three are hollow casts with relatively thick, uneven metal walls, still partially filled with the baked, sandy clay cores that were built around a system of iron armature rods, as seen here in the interior of Peace.

Internal evidence of unique chaplets

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The location of core supports is nearly invisible on the radiographs. Endoscopic examination of the interior metal walls of Justice and Peace where the core had been removed revealed a rather unique feature in both: the raised outline of what looks like a rectangular bronze patch with an integral faceted tapering point extending out from its center. No such chaplets were found in any other large contemporary Parisian bronzes. That these features are idiosyncratic to these two casts is a strong indication of their production in the same foundry. Whether the Abundance has them can’t be verified as the statue is still largely filled with core.

Armature system

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The armature systems were mapped out based on the radiographs for each sculpture, to the extent possible. The gauge of iron rods seems similar in all three. Both of Prieur’s figures show that the core of the protruding arms was bound with wires. The Lefort figure does not have these, probably because the core was almost entirely removed.

Conflicting archival evidence

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It was a surprise to find out from the surviving contract between Prieur and Peron that the founder was to produce the wax model from a plaster piece mold that the sculptor had made of his original model. All of the evidence forced us to reassess our interpretation and points to some version of the lasagna technique described by Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith and sculptor who was active at the French court around this time (Italian, 1500–1571; see GI§2.3.2).

A characteristic core composition?

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Some core could be sampled from underneath each statue. A new methodology based on the precise measurement of the size of the quartz inclusions showed that the cores of the three allegories were not only the same, but very specific with respect to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Parisian bronzes analyzed to date.

Indeed, whereas in most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Parisian bronzes, some of which are represented below, two sizes of inclusions coexist (very small inclusions of around 5 µm in diameter and much larger ones, up to 150 µm in diameter), in the allegories only large inclusions are present (100–200 µm).

The alloys

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Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy analysis (ICP-AES; see II.5§3.1) of a sample drilled from each statue revealed that Prieur’s Abundance and Peace are made of tin-bronze, whereas Lefort’s Justice is made of brass. Moreover, the very different impurity patterns suggest disparate copper ore sources. If Péron cast all three sculptures, he would have been responsible for preparing and pouring the metal. How then to explain the variation in the alloy types?

Summary of findings

A unique founder?

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The three figures were cast by a similar method using idiosyncratic chaplets and a similar core composition, which strongly suggests that they were cast by the same founder. The variation in metal composition would suggest, however, that a different founder may have been involved. All of Prieur’s large bronzes that were cast in France are made of tin-bronze. It is possible that he imposed his choice of alloy on the founder. Conversely, Lefort was of less renown, with no documented previous experience in casting, and so he might have left it up to Péron to work with his preferred alloy, which we assume was brass (this of course is only a hypothesis; we unfortunately have no record of other productions by Péron).

In the end, the sculptors’ different backgrounds and status led us to speculate that the choice of bronze alloy adopted for Prieur’s two figures may have been linked to the artist’s exposure to practices he encountered in Italy, and that the founder Péron was willing and able to successfully execute the casts for the monument in both alloys.

Synopsis of technical parameters

The study was carried out at the C2RMF as a public service to French museums, and the procedures undertaken by staff unless indicated. Its total duration was more than one hundred person-days, as part of Manon Castelle’s PhD research. The study consisted of:

• visual examination: Manon Castelle, David Bourgarit, and Francesca G. Bewer (Harvard Art Museums). This was one of the most time-consuming steps in the study.

• daylight photography: Dominique Bagault and Anne Maigret. Of the circa 100 photos taken per statue, about half were selected.

• X-radiography: Thierry Borel, Jean Marsac, and Elsa Lambert. The particularly large thickness of the metal wall and the core filling created a very dense barrier that pushed the X-ray facilities of the C2RMF to their limit.

• endoscopy: Manon Castelle.

• bulk metal analyses by atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES): Nathalie Gandolfo, Jessica Legendre, Benoit Mille, and David Bourgarit.

• core analysis: Manon Castelle and Yvan Coquinot. In the framework of Castelle’s PhD work, this study offered the opportunity to develop a new protocol detailed in II.7§2.2.4.

Further questions

• What was the original patina of the statues? Was it the same for all three?

• What was Péron’s training and production prior to the casting of the allegories? Such information might provide insight into his alloy preference and approach to casting sculpture.

Further resources

Bewer, Bourgarit, and Bassett 2009

Bresc-Bautier and Scherf 2008

Castelle 2016

Castelle, Bourgarit, and Bewer 2018

Castelle, Coquinot, and Bourgarit 2016

Castelle et al. 2021

Grodecki 1986, 134, 135

Seelig-Teuwen, Bourgarit, and Bewer 2014