Leaping Bull - Barthélemy Prieur (1536-1611) and workshop

Leaping Bull

Bronze, gold-reddish lacquer patina
France, c 1600
Barthélemy Prieur (1536-1611) (and workshop)
ALR Ref: S00238001


H 16 x L 16,5 x P 5 cm
H 6 1/3 x L 6 1/2 x P 2 inch

A promising young sculptor with a prodigious talent, Barthélemy Prieur was drawn to the Italian peninsula to further his studies, where it is known that he was in Rome as early as the 1550s, presumably after having finished his initial training in France (Seelig-Teuwen, 2008, pp.102-03). Prieur has been identified with the sculptor ‘Bartolomeo’, who was working alongside Ponce Jacquio (active 1527 – 1572) on the decorations of the Ricci-Sacchetti palace in Via Giulia (Radcliffe, 1993, 275-276). Whilst his Roman activities remain scarcely documented, it has been suggested that in the 1550s he took part in the large stucco projects organised under the direction of Daniele da Volterra and Giulio Mazzoni; in the later works, his remarkable skill in the use of soft materials such as wax and clay for the models for his bronzes may indeed reflect his activity as a stuccoist (Seelig-Teuwen, 2008, p.102). After several years in Rome, he moved to Turin, capital of the flourishing duchy of Savoy, where his presence is attested in October 1564. There, he became court sculptor to Duke Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy (1528 – 1580), specializing in monumental bronze projects (Seelig-Teuwen, 1993, pp. 365-385). Drawing on his time spent in Rome with Jacquio, Prieur initiated and influenced the development of the small bronze statuette genre in France during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Warren, 2010, p. 22).

Prieur had returned to Paris by the time of his marriage to Marguerite Dalencourt on 27 September 1571 and was recorded to have made some small-scale bronzes by 1583 (Grodecki, 1986, pp. 129-133). When King Henri IV of France (1553 – 1610) came to the throne in 1589, he clearly took a liking to Prieur’s small bronze statuettes. Realising the enormous monarchical propaganda potential that these works would have had, he appointed Prieur to the coveted post of Sculpteur du Roi five years later. In this capacity, he is known to have made reliefs for the Petite Galerie of the Louvre around 1594, alongside restoring certain antique statues for the King.

The estate inventory drawn up in 1583 after the death of Prieur’s wife, along with that of his own estate made in 1611, present lists of models which demonstrate the sculptor’s penchant for depicting animals; the 1611 inventory includes: ‘three figures of animals of [a] lion and horses also of bronze, not chased, taken together ten livres tournois […]’ (Briere & Lamy, 1949, p. 54).

The flourishing of small bronzes in sixteenth-century France is without doubt a result of Italian influences; in the peninsula, they had been made and collected since the mid-fifteenth century, as sculptors were responding to the newly unearthed art of the ancient world as well as to the humanist desire to emulate the taste of the ancients. French bronze collectors were particularly fond of reductions of famous antique models and works after models by Giambologna – bronzes which had been highly regarded throughout Europe since the late sixteenth century (Wenley, 2002, p. 12). According to the renowned Giambologna scholar, Charles Avery, at this time there were probably several Florentine grandees at the French court who possessed statuettes by Giambologna (Avery, 1987, p. 237). Such a taste for Florentine art at the French court in the late sixteenth century was perhaps stimulated by the marriages of Catherine (1519-1589) and Marie de’ Medici (1575-1642) to French kings (Henri II [1519-1559] and Henri IV of France, respectively) and that of Christine de Lorraine (1565-1637) to Grand Duke Ferdinando I (1549-1609) in 1589, which clearly laid the foundations for close cultural and dynastic links between Florence and Paris in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Warren, 2010, p. 25).

This burgeoning taste for Florentine, ‘Giambolognesque’ bronzes is important with regards to the genesis of the present bull, executed in a manner akin to Giambologna’s sinuous, elegant, Mannerist style. The leaping bull is believed to be a work of Prieur’s own invention, probably influenced by his time in Rome where he would have undoubtedly seen small-scale ancient bronzes of the same subject, such as the Rearing Bull now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (inv. 54.602). Yet, at this time, Prieur’s adoption of Giambologna’s style in Paris was completely pioneering, and he was the first specialist French manufacturer of exquisite bronze statuettes in the ‘Giambolognesque’ style. The high finish of the present bull and the visible traces of a rich red lacquer patina allow us to place it in the milieu of Prieur’s best small-scale works.