Cupid Cutting His Bow from the Club of Hercules

Edme Bouchardon portrays Cupid as an adolescent playing a trick on Hercules. The god of love has an impish look on his face. The gentle contours and the spiral motion of the body invite the viewer to walk around the sculpture. This daring work, in which the sculptor sought to realistically portray a naked, unidealized adolescent, was considered shockingly crude at the time. Cupid, portrayed here as an adolescent, has stolen the weapons of Mars and the club of Hercules. Proud of having disarmed these two formidable deities, he laughs maliciously as he tests the spring of the bow he has carved out of the club. Bouchardon showed the terra-cotta model at the 1739 Salon; a marble was commissioned by Philibert Oudry, director of the King's Buildings, in 1740, but as Bouchardon was fully occupied by the Grenelle fountain, he did not begin work on it until 1745. The sculptor made several studies from life to give his figure a natural appearance and exhibited a plaster model at the 1746 Salon. He worked on the marble from July 1747 to May 1750, carrying out the sanding and polishing himself, tasks usually carried out by assistants. However, the astronomical fee - 21,000 livres - he received for the sculpture more than compensated for this. Bouchardon's Cupid is a daring work reconciling antiquity and the Renaissance in its naturalistic treatment of the figure. From Eros Stringing His Bow (Museo Capitolino, Rome), he borrowed the large wings and the motif of the god examining his bow. He must have also looked at a canvas by the Italian painter Parmigianino (1503-1540), then in the collection of the Duke of Orléans in the Palais Royal in Paris. Bouchardon's figure has the same grace, but its sinuous movement surpasses that of its Italian model: the adolescent's pivoting body forms a long spiral. The round base and circular arrangement of the objects on it (rope, quiver strap, lion's tail) accentuate the effect. The sculpture invites one to move around it, no doubt because it was destined to be placed in the middle of the Hercules Room at Versailles.埃德姆·布沙尔东（Edme Bouchardon）将丘比特（Cupid）塑造成一位捉弄赫拉克勒斯（Hercules）的少年形象。爱神面露狡黠神色。柔和的躯体轮廓与螺旋状的肢体动态，引导观者环绕雕塑观赏。这件大胆的作品以写实手法刻画了一名未被理想化的裸体少年，在当时被认为粗粝得令人震惊。此处被塑造成少年形象的丘比特，窃走了玛尔斯（Mars）的武器与赫拉克勒斯的棍棒。因成功制服这两位威严的神祇而得意洋洋，他一边把玩着用赫拉克勒斯的棍棒雕刻而成的弓的弹簧，一边恶意地大笑。布沙尔东曾于1739年沙龙展展出这件陶土原型；1740年，国王建筑总监腓力·乌德里（Philibert Oudry）委托制作大理石版本，但因布沙尔东当时正全力投入格勒内勒喷泉（Grenelle fountain）的创作，直至1745年才着手此事。为赋予雕像自然的姿态，雕塑家完成了多幅写生习作，并于1746年沙龙展展出了石膏原型。他于1747年7月至1750年5月间进行大理石雕刻，甚至亲自完成了通常由助手负责的打磨与抛光工序。不过这件作品为他带来的高达21000里弗（livres）的巨额酬金，足以弥补这一切付出。布沙尔东的《丘比特》是一件大胆之作，其对人体的自然主义刻画手法实现了古典时期与文艺复兴风格的融合。他借鉴了《为弓弦上弦的厄洛斯》（Eros Stringing His Bow，现藏于罗马卡比托利欧博物馆（Museo Capitolino））中的大翅膀元素与爱神检视弓具的创作母题。他大概率还参考了当时收藏于巴黎皇家宫殿奥尔良公爵藏品中的意大利画家帕尔马贾尼诺（Parmigianino，1503-1540）的一幅画作。布沙尔东的雕像同样拥有优雅的姿态，但其蜿蜒灵动的动态更胜这位意大利原作：少年旋转的躯体形成了一道悠长的螺旋。圆形底座与底座上的物品（绳索、箭囊背带、狮尾）的环形排布，进一步强化了这一视觉效果。这件雕塑显然专为凡尔赛宫赫拉克勒斯厅（Hercules Room at Versailles）的中央陈列设计，故而邀请观者环绕观赏。