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121
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Divine Head and Muse
See original version (French)
121
-
Divine Head and Muse
See original version (French)
Estimate €4,000 - €7,000
Voluntary lot
Description
Divine Head and Muse
Henry CROS. Wax head.
Overall dimensions: 44 x 29 x 20 cm (including 8 cm plinth).
Glass case: 60 x 36.5 x 26.5 cm.
Wax (bust) and gilded wood (plinth). Traces of fine cracks; slight dent on the nose. Preserved in a glass case.
Inscribed, dated and signed on the reverse: ‘After the head in Lille – H. Cros – 1869’.
The original head arrived in Lille in 1835, bequeathed to the museum by the painter Jean-Baptiste Wicar (1762–1834), who was active in Rome, where he had certainly purchased it, and which he had dated ‘from the time of Raphael’.
Strange, fascinating, unsettling, the embodiment of ideal beauty – it is hard to describe the impression it still makes, even today, on those who contemplate it: visitors and researchers who continue, in vain, to attempt to identify its artist or even simply to date it. Among its most ardent admirers in the 19th century was Alexandre Dumas the Younger, who described it as ‘divine’ and attributed it to Leonardo da Vinci.
He asked the young sculptor Henry Cros (1840–1907), who had made a name for himself as a ‘wax modeller’, to create for him a replica that was ‘as accurate as possible’. Cros spent a month at the Lille Museum, arousing the curiosity and interest of curators, custodians and visitors, as well as that of the local press, which devoted several articles to him—prompting this amused remark from Cros: ‘my fame is immense’.
Dumas Fils, delighted with the result, placed the head in his study and, a few years later, referred to it as his ‘muse’.
Cros, whose reputation was cemented by this sculpture, did not produce a slavish copy of the Lille model: he used wax for the entire bust (head and drapery) and gilded wood for the plinth, whereas his model is made of terracotta for both the drapery and the plinth. Whilst the tilt of the head is indeed the same, the facial expression is slightly different, and the melancholy it conveys is very much characteristic of Cros, who was known for his taste for dreams and poetry.
And this sculpture confirms the impression he gave to those around him of being ‘a sort of magician or alchemist’. ’
Bibliography: Laurence Riviale. Joconde or Madonna? The Wax Head of Lille, an enigma in the Wicar Collection. Fortune and Reception. Clermont-Ferrand, PUBP, 2022.
Enclosed:
- [Henry CROS?] – 2 original sketches in brown ink. ‘After the Lille Head. H. Cros. 1869’. 1 double-sided sheet, 250 x 198 mm, with tears and small areas of paper missing.
- A. MONGIN. Alexandre Dumas’s Study. Engraved by Van Elven. 280 x 220 mm. The head, resting on a plinth to the right of the desk, turns its pensive face towards the writer.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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