Pencil on paper
58 x 41 cm, 78 x 60 cm (framed)
Signed 'Cst Lorichon' and dated '1818'
Neoclassicism was a movement, visually, that started around 1760 and ended around 1840. A large factor in its arrival was a renewed interest in Classical antiquity due to the recent archaeological discoveries of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748). It was also a reaction against the prevailing frivolous and licentious Rococo style and was an eschewal of the values it represented. Neoclassicism intertwined with the Age of Enlightenment, which placed a deeper importance on science, reason and society over religion, superstition and irrational beliefs. Its views would ultimately lead to the French Revolution towards the end of the century.
It is within the context that the prodigious Lorichon produced, at just the age of 18, this beautiful and refined drawing of the Classical sculpture Hermes Fastening his Sandal. Constant Lorichon was a student of François Forster and won the first prix de Rome in 1820. He went on to exhibit at the Salon from 1824 to 1855, winning a second-class medal in 1827 and a first-class medal in 1836.
Hermes Fastening his Sandal housed, then and now, at the relatively new Louvre (founded 1793), which exists in several versions, are all Roman marble copies of a lost Greek bronze original in the manner of Lysippos.
