The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 4

Notes on the Model in the 17^th & 18^th Centuries in France.

“Several models of different ages and characters are necessary...otherwise even work after nature may become mannered. I would suggest that that practice of always relying on the same model and working from the same forms can become a routine” Charles-Nicolas Cochin, 1777.¹

It is generally thought that the model used in academies was mainly female, but in fact this was not the case, despite all the many depictions of Apelles painting Campaspe and Zeuxis choosing his models as in Vincent’s 1789 version of the subject. Until the 1830s in France it was primarily the male model that was drawn. Cochin’s remark above underlines the artist’s need to be selective which included being judicious about the model that should be used. Entrenched throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries was the idea that “humankind’s greatest and noblest characteristics were embodied in the idealised nude male.”² In the Académie Royale de Peinture de Sculpture- established in 1648- a student would initially encounter the live model by study from “the flat,” i.e. prints or drawings after respected masters. Then he would progress to drawing from casts of antique sculpture, and only after the student had fully familiarized himself with the proportions of the antique would he be allowed to draw from the live model.³ As several scholars have noted, tension built up between having to conform to the ideal of the male nude and the reality of the live model; this would force through changes in studio practice in the following century. By studying académies- “a study of a single nude figure isolated against a plain ground” (Waller) it is possible to track these changes in the use of the model. For example, we note a change from an idealised, classical head to a real physiognomy as in the case of the model Charles Alix Dubosc (1797-1877) (above) who became one of the most successful models of his time, amassing a fortune in the process which he left to found a fund to help artists to pay for models.⁴ Dubosc had a great rival, the Italian Cadamour who was discovered performing at a fair in Dijon. Persuaded to come to Paris, he quickly established a lifelong career as a male model working for important artists like David and Gericault. Leading models like Cadamour and Dubosc took pride in their work which required having a professional knowledge about the muscles in the body. On one reported occasion Dubosc and Cadamour had an anatomical “duel” in which they tried surpass each other in knowledge of the body. Dubosc proved to have superior anatomical knowledge rendering a defeated Cadamour speechless.⁵ In future the Italian vowed that he would only model for the head which can be seen in a fine drawing by Gericault.

1Quoted in Waller, Invention of the Model, ibid, 16.

2Ibid, 4.

3Ibid.

4According to Waller, Dubosc amassed 180,000 francs which he put towards a fund for Prix de Rome competitors to pay for models, Invention of the Model, 35. And Marie Lathers, Bodies of Art: French Literary Realism and the Artist’s Model (University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 35-38.

5Waller, Invention of the Model, 33-34.