James Pradier

JAMES PRADIER (Switzerland, 1790 - France, 1852).
"Ecce Homo".
Medallion with glass urn. Carved wooden frame.
Signed in relief.
Measurements: 34 x 31 cm; 47 x 36 x 17 cm (base with urn).

This medallion, signed J. Pradier, represents the intense rapture of the Ecce Homo. The flight of the gaze towards the sky, the subtle tilted gesture of the head, the crown whose thorns are cut out against the background are, par excellence, the mode of representation of this Christian passage.

A native of Geneva, Pradier traveled to Paris in 1807 to work with his older brother, an engraver by profession. He won a Prix de Rome that allowed him to study in that city between 1814 and 1818 with Ingres, and in 1827 he became a member of the Académie des Beaux Arts and a professor at the École de Beaux Arts. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Pradier supervised the finishing of his sculptures. He is represented in the Louvre and Orsay Museums in Paris, the Metropolitan in New York, the Chi-Mei in Taiwan and the Courtauld Institute in London, among others. The caster, Auguste Maximilien Delafontaine, heir to a family tradition started in the second half of the 18th century by Jean Baptiste Maximilien Delafontaine, deserves special mention. Auguste Maximilien took over the reins of the family factory in 1840, thus beginning the most fruitful period for this foundry. During these years, important sculptors of the time, such as Duret, Cavlier and Pradier, collaborated with Delafontaine.