An image is not available here yet.
View at the museum ↗Silence
Antoine Augustin Préault1842–43
- Attribution
- Auguste Préault (French, 1809–1879)
- Medium
- Plaster
- Physical dimensions
- Diam.: 40 cm (15 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Robert Allerton and Harry and Maribell Blum endowments; through prior acquisitions of Howard Van Doren Shaw
Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.
Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Auguste Préault created this roundel (a composition with a circular format) for the tomb of Jacob Roblès in Père-Lachaise, a Parisian cemetery. Departing from more conventional, comforting funerary imagery of the period—portraits of the deceased or melancholy images of mourning—Préault instead modeled a stark evocation of death. Here, a frail finger is raised to the lips of a deeply shrouded and skeletal face with heavy-lidded eyes, perhaps marking the frontier between life and death. The sculpture met with immediate acclaim upon its first exhibition and became an icon of Romanticism.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0