Sculpture - David Vanquisher Over Goliath, Marius - Jean - Antonin Mercié (1845-1916) - Bronze

Bronze print with brown patina , representing "David" standing , sheathing his sword , one foot on the head of "Goliath", whom he has just decapitated , by Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié (1845-1916) . 
Sculptor's signature "A . Mercié" on the oval terrace , richly carved with arabesques .
Inscription of the founder Ferdinand Barbedienne , "F.Barbedienne.Fondeurs Paris" .
Sculpture of old edition , period second part of the XIXth century .
Very good condition and patina .

Height : 73 cm

With the war of 1870 and the defeat of the country , French society was overcome by a feeling of humiliation and the desire for revenge .

Such a state of mind shows in this David the promise of a France which one day will defeat , despite its weakness , the Prussian Goliath , like the young shepherd of Israel who , with the only help of his sling , felled the enemy giant .
The sculpture was also immediately a huge success : Le Plaster executed in Rome , where the young artist finished his training , earned him the Legion of Honor , and was commissioned in bronze by the State in 1872 , then placed in the Luxembourg Museum - the Museum of Living Artists - from 1874 .
It became one of the most popular images in illustrated newspapers , and was so popular that it was published in six different sizes by the founder F.Barbedienne .

At the turn of 1870, Antonin Mercié embodied the young generation of French sculptors who wished to give , at the heart of a classical teaching , a more vibrant expression to their figures .
He seeks this alliance between scholarly composition and nervous modeling in the great models of the Florentine Renaissance : hence the large and beautiful curves of the arm extended by the movement of the sword, of the bent leg, the grace of David's movement which invites the viewer to turn around the different planes which gradually modulate the space .

Between modern classicism and explicit realism , A.Mercié finds an original path .