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Bust of Saint Barbara School of Troyes, Champagne, circa...

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14600 EUR

Bust of Saint Barbara School of Troyes, Champagne, circa 1520-1530 Partially polychrome limestone H. 33 cm, W. 32 cm, D. 25 cm This remarkable stone sculpture belongs to the traditional Champagne repertoire of the first third of the 16th century. Saint Barbara was one of the most venerated saints in Champagne during the Renaissance. The very small corpus of saints sculpted in the region during the Renaissance includes only Saintes Marguerite or Savine, or anonymous saints, and is mainly dominated by numerous Saintes Barbes. In the guise of a gentle, amiable young girl, the Saint has an oval face with a high, rounded forehead, almond-shaped eyes and modestly lowered eyelids. Long locks of wavy, parted hair fall to either side of her shoulders. A beaded crown sits atop her slightly tilted head. She wears a square-necked gown and an open cloak covering her shoulders. The tower, a symbol of suffering, which serves as the young martyr's attribute, takes the form of an ashlar dovecote tower with a flat-tiled conical roof, a dormer window and a large arched door. As an essential attribute, the integrity of the tower displaying the door at its base indicates that our sculpture, although executed as a bust, could in no way be a fragment of a larger statue. The work of an anonymous, talented sculptor from the Troyes region, our Saint Barbara, with her delicate face and meditative expression, reveals all her inner grace, arousing emotion and conveying a feeling of benevolence. The essential effects that artists sought to convey through their artistic, but above all spiritual, creations. Saint Barbara There is no definite historical record of St. Barbara, who probably died a martyr in the early 4th century. However, her story is set in Turkey, during the persecutions of Maximilian. The figure of the saint became legendary following the compilation of the records of her life in the 7th century and the subsequent publication of Voragine's "Golden Legend". She was the daughter of Dioscorus, king of Nicodemia. He had wanted to lock her up in a tower so that no one could see her. But this did not prevent her from being proposed to by several suitors. In her father's absence, Barbe, who had converted to Christianity, decided to live as a hermit in her tower and convinced the architects to drill a third window in honor of the Trinity... When Dioscorus learned of his daughter's conversion, he was so incensed that he handed her over to the judge to be condemned to death, and took the executioner's place himself. Beard was beheaded and her father was struck by lightning. She is celebrated on December 4.

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