"joan Of Arc At The Bonfire", Bronze Sculpture Real Del Sarte

"Joan of Arc at the stake" Maxime REAL DEL SARTE (1888-1954) Bronze sculpture with green patina Signed at the base 34.3 cm high Around 1930 Joan of Arc is represented with eyes closed, praying, feet on the bonfire, the flames licking his clothes. The whole is uncluttered, the folds of the garment and the bonfire simply stylized. The focus is on Joan of Arc's prayerful face. Five replicas of the statue are known including the original of 1928 is in Rouen, Place du Vieux-Marché. At the base of Montreal's, the artist engraved with his signature "I did this work with love for our Canadian friends, to the glory of the patron saint of world peace" Born May 2, 1888, Maxime Real del Sarte came from a family of artists: nephew of the composer Georges Bizet, he was the favorite disciple of the eminent sculptor Paul Landowski. During the war of 14, he lost a brother to Verdun, and left an arm himself. The amputation - particularly tragic for a sculptor - of his left forearm following an injury to Les Éparges, on the Verdun front on January 29, 1916, did not prevent him from returning to his sculptures. the work he had conceived in March 1914, "Le Premier Toit", received the Grand Prix National des Beaux-Arts in 1921. In the biography she devoted to him at Plon, Anne André Glandy described this sculpture: a man and a woman kneeling in front of each other: in a gesture of protection, the man raises the woman and maintains it while with tenderness she tries to lean on him. This is the keystone principle, the basis of all architecture. From then on, the notoriety of the artist installed in his mill of Billitorte in Chantaco grew up, so much among his friends as in the official world of which he received many orders. "Of the hand which remained to him, notes René Brécy, he has modeled a hundred very varied works, more perhaps conceived in a meditation at once inflamed and subtle. Unable to handle the chisel, he directed with astonishing mastery that of practitioners, chosen among all, to whom he had to entrust the execution of his models. The popularity of the artist is growing and it receives many orders, including some of the state, including several memorials. In his works, the artist emphasizes clean lines and compositions in height to symbolize the elevation of the soul. His career extends until the 1950s. He is probably the sculptor of his generation having erected the most monuments across France. Although of a traditional style, his artistic production is part of the movement in France of the renewal of sacred art after the First World War. This royalist of heart and reason suffered real political persecutions orchestrated by the Third Republic. During the Second World War, in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he managed to prevent the excesses of the occupant and favored the passage of fugitives to the free zone or Spain. Hearing that hostages were to be shot in Bordeaux, he took the train for Vichy, intervened with Marshal Petain and thus managed to prevent this tragedy. In poor health, he retired permanently to his home in Saint-Jean-de-Luz where he died on February 15, 1954.