Pierre-Jean David, known as David d'ANGERS (Angers, 1788 - Paris, 1856) Bichat, preparatory sketch for the monumental group in Bourg-en-Bresse, 1839 Original terracotta Signed on the right on the side of the terrace "DAVID Titled on the front "BICHAT Inscribed on the paper on Bichat's thigh "DE LA VIE ET DE LA MORT" (LIFE AND DEATH) H. 25 x W.15,5 x D.16,7 cm Related literature: -Luc Benoist, La sculpture romantique, Paris, Gallimard, " Art et artistes ", 1994 . -Patrick Le Nouëne, Catherine Lesseur, Autour de David d'Angers : sculptures du XVIIIème siècle et du début du XIXème dans les collections des musées d'Angers, cat. exp.Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 3 December 1994-5 March 1995, Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1994. This terracotta sketch of the physician Xavier Bichat examining a child is a testament to the commitment of David d'Angers, a major figure in the sculpture of the first half of the 19th century, to the representation of contemporary personalities, whatever their specialty, who played a decisive role in French society during the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Second Republic. This student of Roland and Pajou, who attended the studio of Jacques-Louis David, winner of the First Prize of Rome in 1811, is the creator of a gigantic work. During his brilliant career of more than forty years, he trained many students in his workshop at the École des Beaux-Arts. Through the fashion of the medallion portrait, he created effigies of the entire European intelligentsia. Interested in political and artistic life as well as in science, David d'Angers represented with the same conviction nearly seven hundred portraits of artists, philosophers, musicians, lawyers or doctors. In 1830 the State commissioned him to paint a pediment for the Pantheon. The subject: "To great men, the grateful Fatherland" allows him, in the same progressive spirit, to pay tribute to Voltaire and Rousseau, Bonaparte, Lafayette, Fénelon, Monge or even the doctor Bichat. The sculptor, passionate about medicine, was particularly interested in the work of Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771-1802). This professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris and physician at the Hôtel-Dieu is the author of treatises on anatomy and physiology. These themes fed the sculptor's thoughts, particularly on the subject of the representation of the human body, and fed his romantic fascination with the idea of life and death. This is why David d'Angers represents the illustrious doctor through three works of different typology. In addition to the inevitable medallion and a monument to the School of Medicine in Paris, the sculptor used all his influence to be granted the realization of a monument to the glory of the doctor for the city of Bourg-en-Bresse, prefecture of the department of origin of the anatomist. An agreement was reached with the local authorities in 1839. However, it was not until 1843 and numerous negotiations about the pedestal and the cost of the work that the monument was finally realized. If our group is undoubtedly the first sketched version of this monument, David had first imagined another rather curious composition. The doctor was represented in the same posture, taking care of the same child, but the sculptor was thinking of depicting a dead animal at his feet, with a scalpel stuck in its open chest. More wisely, while maintaining a dramatic effect, David replaced the animal with a human corpse more in keeping with the iconographic program. The sculptor himself explains his project in a letter to his friend Victor Pavie: "(...) Three existences are presented on this pedestal: one dreamy, vegetative, pure as the dawn of a cloudless day; the other occupies the middle, the highest part of this human pyramid. This one is passionate, devoured by emotions, it thinks and is consumed (...) Finally, at the base of this pyramid is death, another obscure, hieroglyphic existence (...)". The sketch, quick and synthetic, reveals these three states of life: the innocent and fragile childhood under the features - it is to be noted - of Robert David d'Angers, the sculptor's own son, the adulthood represented by Bichat with his hair in a mess, inhabited by his art, fiery and protective, and finally, at the bottom of the composition, the death illustrated by this corpse soberly but carefully indicated with the tip of the fingers in the ground.