Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

This sketch, also known as Psyché désarmant l'Amour, was posed for by Eugénie Fiocre, principal ballerina at the Paris Opéra from 1864 to 1875. Carpeaux had met the ballerina at a dinner hosted by the Duc de Morny, and it was she who suggested that he model a full length figure of her in her famous role of Psyche. Carpeaux exhibited the plaster sketch for the model at the Paris Salon in 1870. The lifesize version in marble, however, was never executed. Carpeaux did produce a 'finished' model, in the same size as the sketch, which was edited by his atelier in bronze and terracotta.

The model of the sketch was only edited in bronze after the Carpeaux's death. The Hébrard foundry produced an exclusive edition limited to fifteen numbered casts and the editions were cast with the permission of Carpeaux's daughter. The cast of the model was proposed by A. A. Hébrard, as he felt that the sketch, considering the changes in fashion in the early 20th century, would be more à la mode than the finished model. His reasoning was certainly understandable: the present cast has a lightness of touch, produced by the quick modelling of the original plaster, which lends it a modernist aesthetic. 

RELATED LITERATURE:

S. Lami, Dictionnaire des Sculpteurs de L'école Française, vol. I, Paris, 1914, p. 271.