The Polish aristocrat who acquired the château at Montrésor in the mid-19th century possessed, according to the French Wikipedia article about him, une immense fortune. He collected a lot of fine artwork to decorate the château and its gardens.
One of the most striking pieces is an enormous marble sculpture of "The Fallen Archangel" by an Italian artist named Constantino Corti.
In French, I've seen this work called « L'Archange déchu » but also simply « L'Ange déchu ». The fallen archangel is Lucifer (a.k.a. Satan), no? The sculpture was installed at Montrésor in the late 1860s, just a few years before the death of Corti (1823-1873).
The Polish owner of the château was Xavier Branicki. He was a hunter, philanthropist, art collector, financier... and the major of Montrésor from 1860 to 1870.
I meant to comment on your Thursday post -- I loved the photo of those peeling green shutters! So crisp and close an vibrant.
ReplyDeleteThe kitty made me smile, too :)
Judy
Hope you have a nice weekend, J.
DeleteThat's a healthy looking magnolia tree behind Lucifer who is better looking than what I would picture in my mind.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that magnolia too, E. By the way, I changed the blog setting for comment display back to what I had before, because I like being able to reply directly to commenters rather than leaving a comment way down the thread. If you continue having problems with disappearing comments, let me know. Safari has never worked that well with Blogger blogs.
DeletePretty Fabulous if you ask me :)
ReplyDeleteIt's an impressive piece of art.
DeleteGood catch on the magnolia tree Evelyn. I didn't notice it at first glance.
ReplyDeleteFallen angel is a nice sculpture and well, looks kinda handsome, lol.
In your post on the tomb effigies you wondered why they have their hands in prayer. As nearly as I can tell from reading, it's to indicate that they are awaiting resurrection. And there are different poses for different folks, such as knights who were on crusades and so on.
ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating series. And I agree with Evelyn -- if that's what Lucifer looked like, it might explain some of his attraction.