Joseph Villermé (1660 - 1723)

private collection, Spain

This beautifully rendered and cast figure of the Christ Vivant is the only signed work by Joseph Villermé, an artist from Franche-Comté described by Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774) as the greatest maker of crucifixes of the French Baroque. After a fairly standard training in the Gobelins workshops in Paris under Le Brun, Villermé left for Rome and devoted himself to Christianity and concentrated entirely on the making of crucifixes in various fine materials. His reputation was such that aside from Mariette’s praise, several crucifixes by Villermé entered the Medici and Pallavicini collections. Technical research by the Rijksmuseum indicates that the present bronze was made in France before 1700, either suggesting that Villermé had already started on his designs for crucifixes during his time in Paris or that a model was sent from Rome to France to be cast by a French foundry.

Almost all the biographical information we have on Villermé comes from the De Chennevières and De Montaiglon’s publication of Pierre-Jean Mariette’s Abecedario.¹ Like that other great French sculptor of ivory crucifixes, Pierre Simon Jaillot (1631–1681), Villermé hailed from Saint Claude in Franche-Comté. According to Mariette he worked as a sculptor for a certain number of years in Paris, at the Gobelins. Having earned the approval of Le Brun, Villermé came to settle in Rome, where he would spend the rest of his career until his death around 1720–1723. In his Roman studio, inspired by piety and humility, Villermé devoted himself to making only crucifixes. Mariette writes that no other sculptor succeeded better in this field and that some of his work approached the sublime.

Illustrative for Villermé’s devotion to his subject is an anecdote the sculptor himself told Mariette: “To better understand the composition of a body attached to the cross, [Villermé] had made numerous studies and had consulted nature, and through one of these operations, which was done without sufficient precautions, he thought he would lose his life. He had obtained a dead body from a hospital, and this body was that of a man who had died of an excessively malignant fever, and whose viscera were already corrupted. However, he took this corpse with confidence, he placed it in the position of a crucified person, and, when he had arranged all the members as he had imagined best, he hastened to make a mold of it. But soon the load of plaster that he put on the body shifted and tore the skin that covered the belly, and all the gangrenous entrails escaped and flooded the sculptor who, unable to bear the infection, fell half dead and left doubt for some time whether he would recover. It was from he himself that I heard this story that makes one shudder.”

Mariette continues to describe that he saw Villermé work on several crucifixes, of ivory and boxwood, which: “by their correctness, their beautiful work and the novelty of the attitudes, seemed to [him] worthy of all admiration.” Niccolò Maria Pallavicini (1650–1714) had a quantity of Villermé’s crucifixes, with which he had decorated a small gallery in his Roman palace. One of these may be that which appeared on the art market in 2002 and had been discovered in a Roman antiques shop by the editor of the Abecedario Philippe de Chennevières around 1857.² Schmidt’s research into ivories in the inventories of the De’ Medici family in Florence reveals they possessed an ivory crucifix by Villermé by 1778.³ According to an inventory of the Medici collections it had a note attached to it reads “Willervie fecit aux Gobelins” suggesting, like the present bronze that Villermé already made this work when he was still in Paris.

Despite being present in major collections Mariette recounts that Villermé rarely received commissions and had no followers, leading him to leave a life in poverty. Mariette reports that this did not deter the artist: “he found his consolation in religion, and it is by practicing it, and even by leading a very austere life, that he provided a most edifying career.” Villermé was buried in the church of the Minim monks of the Trinità dei Monti in Rome.

An XRF metal analysis report prepared by Arie Pappot of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam d.d. July 2024 is available upon request.

¹ Chennevières/ Montaiglon, op. cit., pp. 82-83;

² Christie"s London, 13 June 2002, lot 65. According to Schmidt 2013, op. cit., this ivory is signed by Villermé but this is not mentioned in the sale catalogue;

3 Schmidt 2012, op. cit., pp. 281-282

RELATED LITERATURE

P. de Chennevières and A. de Montaiglon (eds), Abecedario de P. J. Mariette, et autres notes inédites de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes: Ouvrage publié d'après les manuscrits autographes conservés au cabinet des estampes de la Bibliothèque impériale, Vol. 6, Paris, 1860, pp. 82-83;

A. Dubus, La Légende Brayonne du Chef-d'oeuvre de Villerme, Sculpteur Français, Tiré des notes biographiques de Mariette et de Monsieur le Marquis Ph. de Chennevières, Neufchâtel-en-Bray, 1925;

E. Schmidt, ‘Un ponte d'avorio tra l'Italia e l'Europa’, Diafane Passioni. Avori barocchi dalle corti europee, exh. cat. Palazzo Pitti, Museo degli Argenti, Florence, 2013, pp. 14 ff, pp. 25, 27, fig. 12;

E. Schmidt, Das Elfenbein der Medici. Bildhauerarbeiten für den Florentiner Hof, Munich, 2012.