Silence

Auguste Préault created this roundel (a composition with a circular format) for the tomb of Jacob Roblès in Père-Lachaise, a Parisian cemetery. Departing from more conventional, comforting funerary imagery of the period—portraits of the deceased or melancholy images of mourning—Préault instead modeled a stark evocation of death. Here, a frail finger is raised to the lips of a deeply shrouded and skeletal face with heavy-lidded eyes, perhaps marking the frontier between life and death. The sculpture met with immediate acclaim upon its first exhibition and became an icon of Romanticism.

About the sculpture

Particulars

In the same room · Gallery 220, Art Institute of Chicago

On the same theme · Funerary art

Yes, receiving visitors

What it shows

In the catalog

Sources

The Actor Rouvière in the Role of Hamlet, Recoiling Before the Ghost

Jupiter and the Sphinx

Venus and the Sphinx

Fragment de jambe (la guerre)

Vitellius

Monumentul funerar al Alexandrinei Fălcoianu

Robespierre (1758-1794)

Portretul lui Camille Flers

The Captive Slave (Ira Aldridge), 1827

Amédée-David, the Comte de Pastoret, 1823–26

The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan, 1826

Lion Hunt, 1860–61

Isabella Wolff, 1803/15

Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish, 1837–38

Stoke-by-Nayland, 1836

Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm, 1836/37

Statue of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BCE)

Face Mask (Sirige), 19th/20th century

Male Face Mask (Zamble), Possibly early or mid–20th century

Funerary Cheek-Piercing Ritual, 200 BCE–300 CE

Figure of a Youth from a Funerary Stele (Monument), about 380 BCE

Mask, 100 BCE–500 CE

Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word, 2021

House Model with Ritual Feast, 100 BCE–300 CE