L'inventaire après décès du sculpteur Jean-Jacques Caffiéri

The sculptor Jean-Jacques Caffieri died in his Paris apartment, rue des Canettes, in the parish of Saint Sulpice on June 26, 1792. Awarded a Premier Prix of sculpture in 1748 with his bas-relief Cain and Abel and admitted to the Academy 11 years later, Jean-Jacques Caffieri was one of the most brilliant sculptors of his generation. As a pupil of Jean-Baptist Lemoine, he was outstanding for his marble portraits of litterary and theatrical celebrities: Although not normally at his best with monumental statues he is nevertheless famous as the author of two outstandingly lifelike statues in honour of Moliere and Corneille. We have recently found two manuscripts essential to the knowledge of this highly individual artist, his holographic will (19/06/1792) and his posthumous inventory (26/6/1792) which offer a considerable amount of useful information for the analysis of his collection of works of art. His very comfortable apartment, the paintings adorning the walls, his group sculptures placed here and there, added to his very rich library show him to have been a man of wide culture. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.