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Carved from cream-white marble, a woman stands next to a hip-high, three-legged table in this free-standing sculpture. Her weight rests on her left leg, her right knee bent. She wears a flower crown over a garment that covers her head and falls in sweeping, voluminous folds to her sandaled feet. An urn is tucked into her left elbow and she holds a saucer-like dish in her right hand down by her side to pour oil onto the flames on the altar below. She looks down toward the altar, which is decorated with a ram’s head and garlands.
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Carved from cream-white marble, a woman stands next to a hip-high, three-legged table in this free-standing sculpture. Her weight rests on her left leg, her right knee bent. She wears a flower crown over a garment that covers her head and falls in sweeping, voluminous folds to her sandaled feet. An urn is tucked into her left elbow and she holds a saucer-like dish in her right hand down by her side to pour oil onto the flames on the altar below. She looks down toward the altar, which is decorated with a ram’s head and garlands.

National Gallery of Art · Sculpture

A Vestal

Clodion

Date
1770
Medium
marble
Dimensions
overall: 95.5 x 42.1 x 35 cm (37 5/8 x 16 9/16 x 13 3/4 in.) gross weight: 88.451 kg (195 lb.)
Classification
Sculpture · Statuette
Accession number
1952.5.99
Credit line
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Time span
1751 to 1775
Department
CSD
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • French
  • classical
  • mythology
  • French Sculpture of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
  • Rococo
  • Vestal virgin
Provenance

Probably Catherine II of Russia [1729-1796], Saint Petersburg; Prince Gregory Alexandrovich Potemkin; his grand niece, Darja Nikolajewna Lopouchina, Moscow; W.N. Isakoff, Kiev, before 1904 until probably 1923.[1] David David-Weill [1871-1952], Neuilly-sur-Seine, before 1925;[2] sold 1937 to (Wildenstein & Co., New York), until at least 1940.[3] purchased 1949 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1952 to NGA. [1] The early provenance is from Adrien Prachoff, "La Vestale, statue en marbre de Clodion, dans la collection de W.N. Isakoff," _Khudozhestvennyia sokrovishcia Rossii [Les trésors d'art en Russie]_ 4, no. 2 (1904): 53-56, pls. 20-23. A sculpture that is probably the NGA marble is mentioned as being in an unnamed St. Petersburg private collection in E.F. Bange, _Die Bildwerke in Bronze und in Anderen Metallen, Arbeiten in Perlmutter und Wachs Geschnittene Steine_, vol. 2 of 4, _Die Bildwerke des Deutschen Museums_, Berlin and Leipzig, 1923: 46. Tracey Berg-Fulton, of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, kindly brought the 1923 reference to the Gallery's attention; see her e-mail of 21 January 2015, in NGA curatorial files. [2] Gabriel Henrist, "La Collection David-Weill," _L'Amour de l'Art_, 1925: 14. [3] "Sale of the David-Weill Collection," _Art News_ 35 (27 February 1937): 12. The sculpture was exhibited by Wildenstein in 1940 as formerly part of the David-Weill collection.

Inscription

on base at back: CLODION. inv. fecit Romae. 1770

NGA object ID 41714. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.