French school, ca. 1900.

French school, ca. 1900.
"Aesculapius and Hippocrates".
Direct carving in stone.
On the right side of Asklepios and on the left side of Hippocrates, monogram composed of an M through a triangle and, below, an L.
Measurements: 57 x 32 x 27 (each bust).

Pair of busts in carved stone representing together Asklepios (Asclepius), Greek divinity of medicine, and Hippocrates (Hippocrates), considered the father of western medicine. Both sculptures, conceived as a set, establish an iconographic dialogue between the mythological origin of medical practice and its later rational and scientific foundation.

Asklepios is identified by his traditional attribute, the rod with the coiled serpent - universal symbol of medicine - and by the frontal inscription in Greek alphabet: ?????????. Hippocrates, on the other hand, presents his name inscribed in Latin capital letters: HIPPOCRATES, underlining the historical and humanistic dimension of classical medicine.

Formally, the pieces are inspired by portrait models of Greco-Roman antiquity, reinterpreted through the prism of the historicist taste of the late 19th century. The direct carving in stone, with a sober surface and clearly structured volumes, responds to the academic recovery of the classical ideal typical of the French artistic environment around 1900.

The work is not only decorative, but also symbolic and intellectual: it represents the continuity between sacred medicine and empirical medicine, a duality that was especially celebrated in institutional contexts, such as medical schools, scientific offices or scholarly collections at the turn of the century.