Le Sacrifice à l'Amour

Lot n° 48
Clodion exhibited this exquisite terracotta relief of Le Sacrifice à l'Amour as a pair with La Marchande d'Amours at the 1773 Salon (no. 249), where they are both thought to have been acquired by the Prince de Conti. In 1779, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin drew a small sketch after the relief in his copy of the catalogue of the second sale of the Prince de Conti (lot 285). The present relief was formerly in the Eleanor Post Close and Antal Post de Bekessy collections alongside its pendant of La Marchande d'Amours (Sotheby's Paris, 19 December 2017, lot 293), which bore a label inscribed with details of the Conti sale.

The Sacrifice to Love was a particularly sought-after neoclassical subject, but there is no specific ancient source that the artist could have used as a model. The composition is Clodion's own creation, inspired by classical reliefs and paintings he may have seen in Italy, or published in volumes such as Le Pitture antiche d'Ercolano (vol. IV, p. 69). According to the inventory drawn up after the artist's death in 1814, these reliefs were among Clodion’s favourite works, as he himself owned two versions of the same subject: 'a terracotta low-relief of Le Sacrifice à l'Amour, paired with La Marchande d'Amour' (see Guiffrey, op. cit. p. 229).

Clodion depicts a priestess, robed and veiled, and with a laurel leaf on her head, in the act of making an offering to a nude winged Cupid who stands on a pedestal, one hand holding his bow and the other ready to pull an arrow from his quiver. The priestess pours a libation from a patera onto the altar whilst lighting a fire with a torch. Smoke billows up before her and in front of the figure of Cupid. Behind the priestess, a Vestal Virgin in a classical stola with bare arms, her hair arranged in a chignon, carries two ewers on a tray. A third veiled woman crouches behind her, turning her back to us, holding a large vase. In his Eclogues (VIII), Virgil describes a similar scene: 'Bring water, and with soft wool-fillet bind these altars round about, and burn thereon rich vervain and male frankincense, that I may strive with magic spells to turn astray my lover's saner senses'. As suggested by Scherf, this sacrificial scene can be interpreted as the triumph of Love over Chastity (see op. cit., 1992, p. 160).

Le Sacrifice à l'Amour exists also as a signed marble relief, formerly in the La Live de La Briche collection, and now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (inv. no. Gr. 162). The present terracotta differs from the marble in several details, particularly in the more nervous modelling of the Vestal's loose robes, the relief adorning the altar and the addition of plants in the foreground. Several other terracotta versions are known, including one in the Brinsley Ford collection, London (formerly in the Emile Strauss collection), which Scherf (op. cit. 1992, p. 159) had suggested could be the original Salon version, another formerly in the Georges Wildenstein collection, and a third offered at Sotheby's London on 7 April 1977 (lot 295).

Louis François de Bourbon (1716-1776), Prince de Conti, was one of the 18th century's greatest art collectors. He was Louis XIV's great-grandson, a cousin of Louis XV, and the son of Louis-Armand de Bourbon. As one of the princes who opposed Louis XV, the Prince de Conti played a central role at the court of Versailles in the 1740s and 1750s.

RELATED LITERATURE
D. Sutton, France in the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1968, no. 798, pl. CXXIX, fig. 87; J.J. Guiffrey, "Inventaire après décès de Clodion (30 avril 1814)", in A.A.F., t. VI, Paris, 1912, pp. 210-244