Giacomo SPALLA (Italy, 1775 - 1834) Portrait of Etienne Vincent de Margnolas (1781-1809) Bust in antique marble Signed, located and dated on the left side of the base: "SPALLA. NAPOLEONIS I. SCULPTOR SCVLPSIT TAVRINI MDCCCVIII." Titled on the front of the base: "STEPHANUS. VINCENTE / HONOR. LEG. EQVUS / PROVINCEIÆ. AD. PADVM. PRÆFECTUS." H. 59,6 x W. 28,2 x D. 27,5 cm Related works : - Joseph Chinard, Etienne Vincent de Margnolas (1791-1809), Conseiller d'Etat et préfet, 1809, terra cotta, signed "Chinard de Lyon," H. 64 x W. 64 x D. 38 cm, New York, The Frick collection, inv. 2004.2.01 (fig.1) - Francesco Tanadei (1770-1825), Étienne Vincent de Margnolas, wax profile, diam. 7.2 cm, Turin, Museo di Palazzo, Madama, inv. 70AV. Related literature: - Gérard Hubert, La Sculpture dans l'Italie napoléonienne, Paris, Éditions E. de Boccard, 1964, pp. 311-315. - Ferdinand Boyer, Le Sculpteur Giacomo Spalla et l'administration napoléonienne à Turin, Florence, G. Barbera, 1964. Resolutely neoclassical and displaying the codes of the ancient official portrait, this bust carved in the finest block of ancient marble represents one of the highest magistrates of the First Empire, Etienne Vincent de Margnolas. It was executed by the most famous Piedmontese sculptor, Giacomo Spalla, who entered the service of Napoleon I in 1807, at that pivotal period when Italy had just lost its status as a Republic to become a kingdom under the yoke of Napoleon crowned King of Italy in Milan in 1805. Born in Turin, Giacomo Spalla studied in his native city before moving to Rome around 1791. In the Eternal City, he attended the Academy of Saint Luke where he trained under Antonio Canova. The rigor of his style is as much marked by the "Canovian" canons as by the strict application of Winckelmann's theories. He is on the side of artists for whom, in the art of portraiture, the moral values of a subject are never better translated than by a strictly "all'antica" representation. Very attached to his origins in Turin, his career was mainly based in the Piedmontese capital. But after the annexation of Piedmont by France in 1802, he responded to official French commissions; in 1805 the imperial administration commissioned three busts of Napoleon after the model of Chaudet for the Piedmontese palaces. In 1807 he was appointed "Sculptor to His Majesty and curator of the Imperial Museum of Sculpture in Turin". He sculpted busts of the imperial family or bas-reliefs to the glory of the Emperor's great battles. If his portraits are characterized by the calm and noble solemnity imposed by a heroic commemoration, Giacomo Spalla also remains faithful to a transcription as close as possible to the features of his models, as shown by this beautiful portrait of Etienne Vincent de Margnolas. In 1808, the newly appointed "Sculptor to His Majesty" set about the execution of this very official bust of the young prefect of the Po, Etienne Vincent de Margnolas, as evidenced by the Latin title, which refers to the Roman model of magistracy. Etienne Vincent de Margnolas was a character whose meteoric rise under the Empire was only interrupted by an early death in 1809, at the age of 28. Born into a robe family from Lyon, he was attached to the Ministry of Finance in 1807 when Napoleon appointed him as the emperor's commissioner for the government of Warsaw. He was then quickly made a Knight of the Legion of Honor, prefect of the Po in 1808, and then State Counselor in 1809. He is an exemplary figure promised to the highest destinies that Marshal Davout depicts as someone who "combines a very good head, a lot of education, a very warm heart, dignity (...)". Giacomo Spalla found in this eminent character an ideal model to apply his theories. The Piedmontese sculptor perpetuates the moral virtues and the exemplary course of Stephen Vincent de Margnolas by a portrait of a great and powerful simplicity. Without costume or accessory, cut in hermes, with white eyes in the antique style, the head slightly turned to the side, the bust of this great servant of the Empire is also carved in a magnificent antique marble, probably a reuse. Spalla, rigorous to the extreme, avoids second-rate Piedmontese marble and, in the idea of inscribing the heroism of his young model in posterity, freezes him in a timeless marble whose slightly bitten grain tempers the austerity a little. If one compares Spalla's bust to the more famous portrait of the same Margnolas by Joseph Chinard, one is struck by the calm and powerful monumentality that emanates from it and which makes, by contrast, the virtuoso and sophisticated portrait of the Lyon sculptor gratuitously spectacular and talkative.