Louis-Ernest Barrias “La Nature se dévoilant á la Science” Sculpture
Regular price
$125,000
Louis-Ernest Barrias’s most celebrated work, Nature Unveiling Itself Before Science, stands as an homage to the advances of modern scientific inquiry. The sculpture presents an allegorical female figure in contrapposto, her weight borne on one leg to create a subtle S-curve. Her torso is rendered in luminous alabaster marble, contrasting with a gilt-bronze tunic whose bodice is drawn down to expose her breasts to the unseen male figure of Science. At her waist, a lapis lazuli scarab forms a corsage ornament. With one hand, she draws back a silvered-bronze palla—an elegant mantle traditionally worn by affluent Roman women outside the home—revealing both her form and, symbolically, the hidden truths of nature.
Item #: YS-22071
Artist: Louis Ernst Barrias
Country: France
Circa: 1900's
Dimensions: 29" height, 13" width, 8" depth.
Materials: Gilt Bronze, Silvered Bronze, Alabaster, Marble, and Lapis Lazuli
Signed: “E. Barrias” and “Susse Freres Ed.” and stamped with the Susse Frères foundry mark.
Literature: A similar sculpture is pictured in: Art Nouveau Sculpture, by Alastair Duncan, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1978, p. 95; and in: Majorelle, by Roselyne Bouvier, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Publishers, page 61, color plate 56, displaying an image of the grand salon of Maison d’hôtes du Champagne Perrier-Joüet in Epernay, France.
Item #: YS-22071
Artist: Louis Ernst Barrias
Country: France
Circa: 1900's
Dimensions: 29" height, 13" width, 8" depth.
Materials: Gilt Bronze, Silvered Bronze, Alabaster, Marble, and Lapis Lazuli
Signed: “E. Barrias” and “Susse Freres Ed.” and stamped with the Susse Frères foundry mark.
Literature: A similar sculpture is pictured in: Art Nouveau Sculpture, by Alastair Duncan, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1978, p. 95; and in: Majorelle, by Roselyne Bouvier, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Publishers, page 61, color plate 56, displaying an image of the grand salon of Maison d’hôtes du Champagne Perrier-Joüet in Epernay, France.
Barrias’ sculpture first appeared in marble at the Paris Salon of 1893 under the extended title La Nature mystérieuse et voilée se découvre devant la Science and was subsequently acquired by the faculty of the École de Médecine in Bordeaux. The present version was commissioned two years later for the Escalier d’Honneur at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. Exhibited at the Salon of 1899 and again at the Exposition universelle in Paris in 1900, it became the most widely recognized work in the sculptor’s oeuvre.
The sculpture can be read as a layered allegory of modern science’s relationship to nature, in which older symbolic traditions are reconfigured within a new visual regime of knowledge and authority. It draws on the ancient motif of the “veil of Isis,” in which nature conceals her deepest secrets, while simultaneously recasting it through a modern fantasy of female nature willingly unveiling herself to the scientist, without coercion or force. Within this framework, the Scientific Revolution is cast as a decisive epistemological break: nature is no longer imagined as an active, instructive presence, but increasingly as a passive body exposed to observation and control.
Barrias’ sculpture first appeared in marble at the Paris Salon of 1893 under the extended title La Nature mystérieuse et voilée se découvre devant la Science and was subsequently acquired by the faculty of the École de Médecine in Bordeaux. The present version was commissioned two years later for the Escalier d’Honneur at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. Exhibited at the Salon of 1899 and again at the Exposition universelle in Paris in 1900, it became the most widely recognized work in the sculptor’s oeuvre.
The sculpture can be read as a layered allegory of modern science’s relationship to nature, in which older symbolic traditions are reconfigured within a new visual regime of knowledge and authority. It draws on the ancient motif of the “veil of Isis,” in which nature conceals her deepest secrets, while simultaneously recasting it through a modern fantasy of female nature willingly unveiling herself to the scientist, without coercion or force. Within this framework, the Scientific Revolution is cast as a decisive epistemological break: nature is no longer imagined as an active, instructive presence, but increasingly as a passive body exposed to observation and control.
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