Coutau-Bégarie et Associé♛s, Paris, 28 November 2018, ꦫlot 255

The relief was attributed to the Dijon born sculptor Claude Ramey (1754-1838) when sold in Paris in 2018, presumably due to similarities with the terracotta sketch model for the pediment of the Louvre courtyard with the Genius of France under Napoleon (Louvre, Paris, inv. No. RF25010). Ramy exhibited 'trois esquisses en cire rouge' in the Paris Salon of 1793, and also exhibited a terracotta La Mort de Cléopatre at the Salon of the same year. The present relief certainly owes a debt to the revolutionary Neoclassical style of which Jacques Louis David was the greatest exponent. The present scene with the dying young woman and children clamouring at her feet, is reminiscent of the tragic death scene from Euripides’ Alcestis, when the young mother passes into the underworld with her children at her feet begging her not to die. Pierre Peyron (1744-1814) painted The Death of Alcestis in 17🌠94, of which there are versions in the Louvre and in the North Carolina Museum of Art.

RELATED LITERATURE

S. Lami, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'École Française, Paris, 1911, p. 280