Princess with her daughter, terracotta, 18th French school

Princess with her daughter, terracotta, the French school of the late 18th century

Precious terracotta sculpture representing a princess sitting with her daughter on a marquise chair.
The mother is richly clothed in a muslin dress on which is stapled a cashmere shawl decorated with trimmings. She wears a headband and a bun from which a veil springs.
Her daughter, sitting next to her, holding her hand, is richly dressed in the latest fashion of the time, with a beautiful antique-style dress and a ribbon in her hair.
They are both seated on a marquise chair finely sculpted with rosettes and flutes, and richly upholstered with lambrequins.

Nice state of preservation ; (inlays of gems holding the ribbon and the shawl are probably missing).

French school of the late 18th century

Dimensions:

Height: 29 cm; width: 16 cm; depth: 16 cm.

Our opinion:

As the Antique-style clothing of our subjects indicates, the precious terracotta we present was made around 1790-1795.
Everything on our terracotta is of high quality, and at the forefront of fashion in 1795, whether it is the large marquise embellished with lambrequins or the cashmere shawls with rich trimmings.
Following the publications of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, children take an important place in society and maternal tenderness is displayed in the arts at the end of the century.
An identical iconography can be seen in the portraits of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, depicting children richly dressed in the antique style and wearing similar ribbons in their hair.
The princess wearing a crown is not identified, but she is probably a member of the political elite of the French Directory or Empire. Given the meticulous details, the author of our terracotta is a great artist whose style is close to that of the great French neoclassical.