The dashing Étienne Vincent de Margnolas was a rising star in Napoleon’s government. In 1809, aged twenty-eight, he won an appointment to the Conseil d’État, the law-making body of the Napoleonic Empire. The bust was probably intended to mark this occasion, but Margnolas died a few months later. This bust by Joseph Chinard was exhibited the following year at the Salon in Paris. Though thought to be lost, the final marble version of the work was re-discovered in 2014.
Despite the use of the malleable medium of terracotta, there is something rigid about Margnolas’s attitude, which, together with the blank irises of his eyes, suggests that the bust may have been completed after the sitter’s death. The fashionably unruly mass of waves and curls, and the cape, hanging precariously off Margnolas’s shoulders, barely held up by a rope and heavy tassels, however, seem to indicate the opposite. Sitting somewhere between life and death, this bust leads us to ponder the problematic relationship between portraiture—especially sculptural portraiture—and death.
Like his subject, Joseph Chinard thrived during Napoleon’s reign. He produced great monuments to memorialize the emperor’s military victories and more intimate portraits of the family, including the Empress Josephine.
Portrait of Étienne Vincent de Margnolas
With his head slightly tilted, Vincent de Margnolas gazes off into the far distance, seemingly lost in thought. The curls that fall across his forehead, his pursed lips, and the lines above his mouth all add a realistic note to Chinard’s otherwise idealized depiction. These details are in perfect equipoise with the classically presented physiognomy of this imperial official, whose eyes are modeled without irises, as would be appropriate for a subject from antiquity. Even Vincent de Margnolas' coiffure derives from a classical prototype (styled à la Titus), yet in the sculpting of the terracotta, the locks and curls assume a movement and energy that are almost Romantic.
Although the bust is not dated and previously has never been published, it was exhibited at the Salon of 1810 and was likely to have been commissioned to commemorate Vincent de Margnolas' appointment to the office of Conseiller d’État, the empire’s supreme legislative body, in February 1809. In January 1808, following several prestigious government appointments, Vincent de Margnolas was made prefect of Po, the region of Piedmont in northern Italy that had been annexed to France in 1802. At only twenty-seven years of age, he was unusually young for that office. In February 1809, he returned to Paris to accept the appointment as Conseiller d’État. As a member of the Conseil d’État, he was destined for a ministerial or senatorial career, one that was cut short by his untimely death (the precise cause of which is unknown) on October 13, 1809.
In April of 2014, a marble bust of Portrait of Étienne Vincent de Margnolas by Chinard (ca. 1809) appeared in an auction in Paris (Drouot Richelieu, Salle 10, Mobilier & Objets d’Art dont une collection de Philatélie, Lot 257). This marble bust may possibly be the final version of The Frick Collection terracotta prototype.
