Peter Gaspar Scheemakers, 1691–1781, Flemish, active in Britain (from ca. 1720)
Title:
Cleopatra
Date:
ca. 1723
Materials & Techniques:
Marble
Dimensions:
Overall: 12 x 28 x 11 1/4 inches (30.5 x 71.1 x 28.6 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.30
Gallery Label:
Small-scale marbles with mythological or historical subjects were popular on the Continent but rare in Britain, where the taste in sculpture was for more prosaic fare: monumental tombs, portrait busts, and garden statues. Nevertheless, when Flemish sculptors Laurent Delvaux and Peter Scheemakers joined forces in London in the mid-1720s, they found a lucrative sideline in making pairs of small recumbent nudes, all of them given respectable classical titles. Intended for private enjoyment rather than public display, the miniaturized scale and sleeping attitudes of these figures of Ariadne, bride of Bacchus, and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, were undoubtedly designed to invite the caresses of their male owners. The artistic collaboration between Delvaux and Scheemakers was short-lived. In 1728 the pair sold their stock and left London for Rome, parting company shortly thereafter. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
