Lot 28: A BRONZE FIGURE OF A WOMAN COMBING HER HAIR FRENCH, LATE 16TH CENTURY, ATTRIBUTED TO BARTHELEMY PRIEUR (1536-1611)

seated on a tree stump covered with her robe, combing out the long tresses of her hair to make a plait 5 1/2 in. high (14 cm.); on a porphyry base. Comparative LITERATURE Y. Hackenbroch, "A Group of Italo-Dutch Bronzes" Connoisseur, September 1963, pp. 16-20 B. Jestaz, "Travaux recents sur les Bronzes, II, Renaissance Septentrionale et Baroque" in Revue de l'art, 9, 1970, pp. 78-79 A. Radcliffe, European Bronzes from the Collection of Willi Cotton and Charles Rogers, exibition catalogue, Sotheby's, London, 1979, no. 3 R.R. Wark, Sculpture in the Huntingdon Collection, Los Angeles, 1974, pp. 66-67, pl. XVI "Kavalier und Magd", Weltkunst, 15th December 1991 Anthony Radcliffe. The Robert H. Smith Collection. Bronzes 1500-1650, London. 1994, cat. no. 28, pp. 150-153 The present model belongs to a number of works which were formerly described as Italo-Flemish and ascribed to the Master of the Genre Figures but which are now generally regarded as French and the work of Barthelemy Prieur. From his inventory after his death, Prieur is known to have been a producer of bronze statuettes, listing little bronzes of both men and women standing and sitting of 5 or 8 pouces high, (the present bronze corresponds to 5 pouces) none of which are specified. However, in the inventory after death of Andre Le Nostre of 1700, there appear three of the series of women at her toilet associable to Prieur, Radcliffe, (op.cit.p. 150). These comprise of the woman braiding her hair, the woman combing her hair, and, combined with the latter in a single item, the woman pulling a thorn from her foot. Barthelemy Prieur was born in 1536 in Berzieux in Champagne, little is known of his youth but between 1564 and 1568 he is recorded as working for the court of the Archduke Emmanuel Filibert of Savoy in Turin. In 1571 he appears in Paris where he worked on the funerary monuments for both the heart and body of the High Constable of France, Anne of Montmorency. As a Hugenot he was forced into exile and he spent the years 1585-1594 in the North West town of Sedan when it has been suggested he started sculpting his genre figures. On Henri IV's accession to the throne in 1594 he became court sculptor.