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1856–1859 · Uddannelse

French Academy in Rome

1856–1861

Rome: Michelangelo and street sketches

From January 1856 he lives at the Villa Medici and studies Donatello, Verrocchio, Raphael and Michelangelo; tired of academicism, he wanders the streets of Rome sketching and looking for living subjects — perhaps it is then that he resolves to make the ordinary life of people, their festivals and pastimes, the main subject of his art. Michelangelo remains his sun: when an artist feels pale and cold, he said, he should run to Michelangelo to warm himself.

1862

Returns to Paris and is presented at court

Back in Paris, he is presented to the imperial court by his friend and patron Eugène d’Alvin de Piennes, soon to become the Empress’s chamberlain, and becomes a sought-after portraitist, though he was never a court official. An admirer of Napoleon III, Carpeaux also contrived a face-to-face meeting with the emperor at Amiens, where he persuaded him to commission a marble statue.