Autour de la statue de Desaix par Nanteuil

Abstract

Antoinette Ehrard, Concerning the Statue of Desaix by Nanteuil in the Place de Jaude at Clermont-Ferrand. At Clermont-Ferrand, in the place de Jaude, the visitor to-day discovers, close to the monumental and fiery Vercingetorix by Bartholdi, a modest bronze statue of Desaix. Although inaugurated in August 1848, it is not of republican origin. Ten years earlier, the General Council of Puy-de-Dôme had decided to erect one, in the context of the policy of national reconciliation ordained by the King of the French, a policy that highlighted the continuity of French history wherever public commissioning was involved. The memory of Desaix benefited from this trend in art and letters. The choice of Nanteuil's project, preferred to that of Antonin Moine, whose model is conserved at the R. Quilliot Museum in Clermont, is probably due to the public notoriety of a former Prix de Rome, recently admitted to the Institute. Also perhaps to reasons of economy, for here the hero is on foot, not on horseback as in the Moine version. Be that as it may, the funding of the project was no easy task and the result did not inspire more admiration then than it does to-day. The inauguration, however, was a festive republican event. And in 1900, the statue occupied centre-stage in the ceremonies marking the Marengo centenary. The need felt by the Third Republic for the prestige of a republican general explains the honour showered on a second-rate monument which never relived that moment of glory throughout the 20tn century, let alone in June 2000.