"The first platform in the world is the saddle of a horse" Lamartine
The equestrian representation of the prince is extremely old, as it was already known in ancient times.
The famous bronze effigy of Marcus Aurelius (121-180) from the Capitol in Rome was the model par excellence. Known throughout the West by innumerable scale models, it inspired many artists.
The first projects were initiated in France with Francis I who commissioned Primaticcio to make a bronze cast of the Roman Marcus Aurelius. Catherine de Medici considered Michelangelo to sculpt her husband Henry II who was killed in a tournament. His pupil Daniel de Volterra made the bronze horse, and the king was left out of the picture until Louis XIII was put back in the saddle on the mount that had been abandoned three quarters of a century earlier by its creator and the sponsors. The statue of Henry IV was the first to be erected in the public square and the last in which the king wore the clothes of his time. A long series was thus begun, which was to be expanded especially in the years 1680 to 1700 and whose apotheosis surely remains the monument to Louis XIV by Girardon erected on the Place des Victoires in Paris in 1699
The way in which the king is shown as a horseman therefore evolves according to power. With the reign of Louis XIV, the absolute state asserts itself. The horse is therefore the mirror of the sovereign's policy: his warlike, and therefore external, internal, institutional and cultural policy.
The king on horseback adopts two main gaits: a calm gait: the horse has one of its forelegs raised and the diagonal hind leg detached from the ground, it is called "the passage", this majestic gait is an elegant position. The second is "la levade", more lively, the horse lifts his forelegs while almost sitting on his hindlegs. It symbolises the charge and evokes the heroism of the sovereign, even if he never charges.
Sitting on his horse, Louis XIV symbolises military authority by brandishing the baton of command, an amplification of a gesture that directs a weapon, he thus embodies power.
War was the great business of princes and kings in the 17th century, but in the second half of the century the king no longer led his troops into battle. Since the captivity of Francis I at Pavia, the king was far from the theatres of military operations, but as a great communicator Louis XIV invented royal heroism "in image".
This sculpture is a scale model of the bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV located on the Place d'Armes in front of the Château de Versailles.
Designed by Pierre Cartellier, it was unfinished at his death in 1831, only the horse initially designed for an equestrian statue of Louis XV commissioned in 1816 by Louis XVIII for the Place de la Concorde (not realised) was completed. Louis XIV is the work of Louis Petitot, the whole will be cast in bronze by Charles Crozatier in 1838 who will execute some reduced models.
Pierre Cartellier, (1757 - 1831) goldsmith and sculptor, professor at the Paris School of Fine Arts, member of the Institute. Louis XVIII asked him to create the equestrian statue of Louis XIV to celebrate the restoration of the Bourbon family.
Louis Messidor Lebon Petitot known as Louis Petitot (1794-1862), son of the sculptor Pierre Petitot, pupil of Pierre Cartellier, whose son-in-law he became. He won the Prix de Rome in 1814 and lived at the Villa Medici from 1815 to 1819.
Charles Crozatier (1795 - 1855), a bronzemaker, was a disciple of Pierre Cartellier. At the same time as Louis Petitot, he went to Rome and brought back a number of casts. Established in Le Puy en Velay, he discovered several processes to improve the moulds, and was thus entrusted with the execution of monumental castings.
The equestrian statues of Louis XIV animate the squares of major French cities such as Lyon, Rennes, Dijon, Bordeaux, Montpellier.
The equestrian statues of Louis XIV
Equestrian statue of Louis XIV in the guise of Marcus Curtius by Le Bernin and re-sculpted by F. Girardon. Completed in 1677
Equestrian statue of Louis XIV by Martin Desjardins for the Place des Victoires in Paris in 1679
Equestrian statue of Louis XIV by François Girardon for the Place Louis le Grand (now Place Vendôme) in 1685
Equestrian statue of Louis XIV by Antoine Coysevox for the place du Parlement in Rennes 1690
Equestrian statue of Louis XIV by Martin Desjardins for the Place Bellecour in Lyon delivered in 1713
