• Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929)

• 204 x 76 x 90 cm
• 1885
• Plaster
• MB Pl 4548
• Paris, musée Bourdelle

Having arrived in Paris just a year earlier, the twenty-four-year-old Bourdelle submitted the plaster version of Première Victoire d’Hannibal (First Victory of Hannibal) to the Salon of French Artists. The artist depicted a youthful achievement of the future Carthaginian general, as Gustave Flaubert depicted him in Salammbô (1862): despite his young age, Hannibal grasped an eagle, which he suffocated against his chest at the end of a cruel fight. Although he would soon alter its shapes, Bourdelle carefully depicted the episode in this work, attempting to faithfully recreate the eagle’s anatomy as well as the victorious gesture of the young man. Such virtuoso naturalism would earn him a mention honorable at the Salon.

Notice's author : Jérôme Godeau