Bronze for the Musée de Vizille

5/2/24 - Acquisitions - Vizille, Musée de la Révolution française - Since June 30, 2023, the Musée de la Révolution Française has been presenting a highly interesting exhibition entitled French Revolution Style
Furniture, works of art and wallpaper (ill. 1 and 2). Among the most surprising objects on display, in two side-by-side showcases, are a superb pair of bronze urns with lids, and two rare candelabra bases, also in bronze, based on models by Joseph Chinard. These exceptional pieces will be a welcome addition to the museum’s collections: they have already been acquired with the help of FRAM, and will become part of the permanent collection when the exhibition closes in March 2024 [1]. The latter were able to buy them to a public sale at Osenat in Versailles in 2020 [2] and proposed them to the Musée de Vizille, aware of the importance of these pieces and their close correlation with the museum’s collections of the French Revolution.

3. Joseph Chinard (1756-1813)
The Authority of the People or Jupiter Striking the Aristocracy.
(Reason or Apollo Trampling Despotism and Superstition at His Feet)
Lost-wax bronze - H. 51.5 and 50.5 cm
based on models from 1791
Vizille, Musée de la Révolution française
Photo: Galerie Terrades
Photo : Galerie Terrades

See the image in its page

Joseph Chinard made these two candelabra during his second trip to Rome. They were commissioned in 1791 by Lyon silk merchant Claude-François Van Risamburgh, a descendant of the BVRB cabinetmaker dynasty and administrator of the "Caisse patriotique de Lyon". Wanting to show his attachment to the ideas of the Revolution, the patron requested that these works be "allegories of republican spirit" [3]. The young sculptor incurred the wrath of the population and the Roman authorities by creating two terracotta projects whose iconography was deemed heretical by the pontifical police. Indeed, Reason is embodied by a winged Apollo, wearing a crown of sun rays, crushing a woman in…