Venus
Statue in white marble; pedestal in white marble with grey veins
Signed and dated on the plinth of the statue:A.ROME.PAR.F.M.PONCET.1782
Venus: height: 120 cm; 47 ¼ in.
Pedestal: height: 100.5 cm; 39 ½ in.
length: 45 cm; 17 ¾ in.
depth: 45,5 cm; 18 in.
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Provenance:
Maurice Fenaille (1855-1937);
Thence by descent.
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Literature:
European Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, Daniel Katz Ltd, London.
Maurice Fenaille, les secrets d’un mécène, exhibition catalogue, Rodez, Musée Fenaille, 2000.
Art in Rome in the Eighteenth century, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000.
Lami S., Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'école française au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1911, 2 vols.
Michel O., ‘François-Marie Poncet (1736-1797) et le retour à l’antique’ in D. Ternois (éd.), Lyon et l’Italie. Six études d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 1984, pp.115-180.
Michel O., Vivre et peindre à Rome au XVIIIe siècle, Rome, Ecole française de Rome, 1996.
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The present marble sculpture in beautiful condition was carved by the renowned French sculptor François Poncet, who travelled to Rome to imbue himself with Antique culture. In 1778, back in Paris, he made a statue of Venus (Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris), which surprisingly was not made from antique fragments. Praised by the critics for its fresh originality, the success of this statue led to the creation of two similar versions, of which ours is one. It varies in a few details from the Cognacq-Jay sculpture, such as the position of Venus' hands.
The Italian newspapers and the October issue of Mercure de France extolled the sculptor’s talent: “M. Poncet, célèbre sculpteur français, vient d’achever une superbe statue de Vénus; tout le monde se porte en foule chez lui pour la voir, avant qu’il l’envoie en France. On parle avec beaucoup d’admiration de ce morceau qui n’est copié d’après aucun antique, et qui est original”. The originality with which Poncet revisited Antique themes in his work is best illustrated in his sculpture of Venus as well as that of Adonis (1784; Dublin, N. G.), in which he gave physical form to Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s ideas.
The patrons of the two versions are not known, but there is a record of a marble Venus in the collection of the Lyon amateur Jacques Imbert-Colomès (1729–1808), who was the first mayor of the city. It came from the collection of Maurice Fenaille who was also a collector from Lyon, and thus it is likely that our sculpture is the same one.
Poncet studied at the Académie de Beaux-Arts de Marseille before becoming a pupil of Etienne-Maurice Falconet (1716–1791) at the Académie Royale in Paris. After failing twice at the Prix de Rome, he left in 1760 for Rome where he spent most of his career with the international community of neo-classical artists Laurent Pecheux, François Joseph Lonsing, Etienne Antoine and Sergel. He made many works after the Antique style.
In 1775 he decided to return to France where he was received as a member of the Lyon Academy as well as the Paris one. Two years later he was back in Italy, stopping first in Bologna where he became a member of the Academy and then in Rome where he ran a successful studio, with many clients from the Grand Tour. In 1796 he was in Marseille, where he figured among the signatories of a petition claiming the masterpieces of Rome for France. He died a year later.
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