Lot 62: Charles-Louis Corbet, French (1758-1808) A late 18th century Carrara marble relief depicting Charlotte Corday dated 1793

dated 1793
depicted in profile, wearing a ribbon in her hair, signed below CORBET 1793, 52.5cm high x 41cm wide (20.5" x 16")

Charles Corbet trained in Paris with Pierre-Francois Berreur. He is known to have exhibited a series of animalier sculptures at the Salon de la Correspondence in Paris in 1781, before moving to Lille. He exhibited regularly at the Lille Salon, organised by the Academie at Lille, until 1790.
His work Time Clipping Cupid's Wings, a terracotta group dated 1776 is now in the Louvre. In 1794 he produced a plaster statue of Liberty, a sure sign of his support of the revolutionary cause; however during the Empire (1804-15) he exhibited regularly at the Salon and produced a statue of Napoleon in 1808 for the senate (now lost), as well as contributing to the decoration of the Arc de Triomphe.

Charlotte Corday was a key figure in the French Revolution. She was infamous for the murder of Jean-Paul Marat, the Jacobin leader, whom she stabbed to death in the bath tub. Marat conducted much of his business from the bath due to a serious skin condition, and had welcomed Corday into his house as she claimed to have inside information about an uprising at Caen. Corday was guillotined for his murder four days later, claiming that 'I killed one man to save 100,000': she believed that Marat would incite a civil war and his actions lead to the collapse of the Republic. The present portrait relief was executed the same year as the celebrated painting by Jacques Louis David depicting 'The Death of Marat'.

Related Literature: Sculpture Francaise II - Renaissance et Temps Modernes, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1998.
The Dictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner, pub. Grove, page 837.