Leseprobe

141 African Nicolas Cordier (attributed to) Saint Mihiel 1567–1612 Rome c. 1610 Marble; height 34 Purchased from the Chigi Collection, Rome, in 1728 Inv. no. Hm 187a The sculptor Nicolas Cordier, who hailed from Lorraine, settled in Rome around 1592/93, where he was employed by Pope Clement VIII, Pope Paul IV, and Car- dinal Scipione Borghese. Cordier was one of the first sculptors of the early modern period to work with the representational possibilities of coloured marble in the style of antique models. For his famous Moro Borghese (today in the Louvre, Paris), for example, Cordier took an ancient Roman fragment, the torso of a draped statue in reddish alabaster, to which he added head and limbs in black marble in order to create the image of a young African man. The statue’s charac- teristic head and tight, wiry curls are obviously reproduced in this bust. It came from the Chigi Collection in Rome, and was mistakenly considered an antique original when it was purchased for the Dresden collection at a phenomenal price. In its execution, the Dresden head is even more finely worked than the Moro Borghese . The dark marble of the face is polished to a high gloss, while there is a marked absence of finish in the treatment of the hair that deftly reproduces the natural texture of frizzy African hair. To enhance the effect, the artist inlayed the eyeballs in white marble, lending the subject a lively, if somewhat nervous, ap- pearance.  |  ckg