Offered by Franck Baptiste Provence
Rare dining room fountain in two-tone marble.
It consists of two elements, a large rectangular panel and a monolithic basin in Aleppo breccia marble *.
The panel is decorated with a large mask of Neptune in Carrara marble serving as a drain.
The god of the sea, oceans and springs is represented as a bearded man wearing a crown of rushes.
The oblong basin is slightly quadrilobed and simulates two "C"s stapled together in the central part.
High-quality breccia marble; very fine and nervous sculpture.
Very good state of conservation, small wear on the nose and mouth of the fountain mask.
The mask attributed to the Aix sculptor Jean-Pancrace Chastel (1726-1793).
Aix en Provence, mid-18th century around 1750.
Dimensions:
Panel: height: 68 cm; Width: 47 cm
Basin: Width: 65 cm; depth: 42 cm; Height: 15 cm
Provenance: Dining room of a country house in the Aix region.
*Aleppo breccia marble, also called "Tholonet breccia", is a marble composed of large brown, gray, red or black fragments of various sizes trapped in a light yellow background.
It has been known since Antiquity and extracted in the commune of Tholonet in the Bouches-du-Rhône from 1712, then in Beaurecueil in 1735 and in Saint-Antonin in 1756.
Our opinion:
The fountain that we present is characteristic of the dining room fountains preserved in the country houses and castles of the Aix-en-Provence region.
This precious marble extracted in the Sainte Victoire massif was mainly sold to wealthy Parisian merchants while the most beautiful blocks were assigned to the service of the king's buildings.
However, some great families of the Provençal nobility used this precious resource; in fact, such fountains can be found in the beautiful private mansions of the Mazarin district, at the Tholonet castle or at the Grand Pré castle in Vitrolles in Luberon or the Brancas, then Comte de Forcalquier had an impressive fountain with double masks made of Carrara marble.
The still very "Louis Quatorzienne" inspiration of the masks of these fountains very often refers to the great sculptor Pierre Puget (1620-1694) who was one of the great singers of baroque art in France.
The latter, who directed the sculpture workshop of the Toulon arsenal and specialized in the representations of aquatic divinities and maritime fauna, inspired several generations of Provençal sculptors including Jean-Pancrace Chastel (1726-1793).
The thick furrowed eyebrows, the treatment of the pupils and the beard are in fact characteristic of his work and can be compared to the masks of the fountain of the town hall of Aix en Provence and his allegory of the Rhône of the Halle au grains.
Like all sculptors, Chastel worked a lot for the church but also for the country houses and castles of the Aix region, he sculpted pillar ornaments, water buffets, park sculptures... and many masks that adorned the most beautiful buildings of the city with a thousand fountains.
Our mask represents the god Neptune, but his crown of rushes here personifies a source of fresh water, an essential element in the establishment of a rich residence under the old regime.
The power of the sculpture, the theme and the richness of the marbles used make it a very fine example of the art of sculpture in Provence in the 18th century.
