Nymph with Cupids

Claude Michel, known as Clodion, was French but lived in Rome between 1762 and 1771. There he studied classical Roman sculpture, as well as the work of Michelangelo and Bernini. He was famous for small-scale terracotta groups, often made for private collectors.

Clodion's broadly classical style is evident in this group of a nymph surrounded by four little cupids, one of which crowns her with a wreath of laurel. This group has echoes of Clodion's simpler terracottas of an adult carrying a child on a shoulder (examples are in the Fogg Museum, Massachusetts; and Ottawa National Gallery of Canada). Here he is more ambitious, including four small cupids in his composition. Putti and cupids feature in a large number of reliefs and other small-scale freestanding statuettes by Clodion and they are generally, as here, a subsidiary element alongside the main subject.