Skulptur.Blaise Pascal

SCULPTURE. By biskvi. The French scientist and scriptwriter Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) sits in a county chair looking a writing board with a geometric figure. We his feet are a look-up book with the text Lettres/a un/Vi, which aims at one of him in 1656-67 written. Modeled after an original sculpture by Augustin Pajou (1730-1809). The factory was founded in 1738 in Vincennes, transferred in 1756 to Sèvres. The order of the sculpture of Pascal from Augustin Pajou, and the first model in clay by the sculptor, dates from 1779 but only the plaster model was completed in time to be exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1781. The marble statue today belongs to the Louvre’s collections. A small scale beekeeper dates from 1783. Pajou was paid on 3 June 1784 for the clay models of Pascal and Descartes (3). He had previously collaborated with the factory by creating in 1771 several different bust models of Louis XV’s measuring press, Madame Du Barry, and received an order for an allegorical sculpture group at the birth of the crown prince in 1782 (2). The Grands Hommes series also included small scale sculptures by Bossuet and Turenne delivered in 1784 (3). The Pascal sculpture’s allusions on the Provincial Letters and geometric figures highlight the diverse endowment of the depicted person as a writer and mathematician. Le Riche’s attestation and the way the burnt crack has been sealed show that it is indeed a very old specimen. The pedestal is in this case oval rather than rectangular with a semicircle at the front, similar to the specimen in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, while the artwork in clay on the left is parallel to the pedestal. Since the components were made separately, such differences are irrelevant. (2) Exhibition catalog: Pajou Sculpteur du Roi 1730-1809, James David Draper and Guilhem Scherf, Paris, Réunion des Musées nationaux 1997 3) Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, Archives, register Vf34. Payment of Pascale and Descartes models on 3 June 1784, 27 December 1784 for Bossuet and 22 January 1785 for Turenne.