Gloria Victis! (Glory to the Vanquished)

Inscriptions

Signed, in metal, on ground beneath raised figure: A. MERCIE; inscribed, in metal, across front of base: GLORIA VICTUS; inscribed, on base, beneath drapery: F. BARBEDIENNE, Fondeur. Stamped, on base, beneath winged figure's extended foot: [Man's profile, facing right] encircled, from lower left to top to lower right: REDUCTION MECANIQUE; beneath man's profile A. COLLAS / [illeg.]

Label

Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié’s bronze sculpture Gloria Victis uses the traditional visual language of allegory to represent the agony of defeat and the promise of regeneration at a time when France was reeling from its loss in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the trauma of a violent internal revolution that followed, known as the Commune (1871). While it has been suggested that Mercié first conceived of the work as an homage to his friend Henri Regnault, a young history painter who died fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, the two figures—a winged female who carries a dying nude male warrior with a broken sword in hand—represent generalized symbols of perseverance in the face of adversity. French viewers with even a passing understanding of fine art would have been able to interpret these figures not as specific individuals, but rather as stand-ins for broad (and ambiguous) national ideals of resilience. The sculpture was an instant public success when it was first shown as a terracotta model at the Salon exhibition of 1874, where the jury awarded it the highest honor: a gold medal.

France’s humiliating loss in the Franco-Prussian war occurred in several stages; after the Emperor Napoleon III surrendered at the Battle of Sedan and fled to exile in England, the Prussian army laid siege to Paris for the winter of 1870–71. When France’s new Third Republic government surrendered to Prussia, a revolution erupted in Paris, known as the Commune, which was brutally suppressed by government forces during the “bloody week” in May of 1871. The twin traumas of wartime defeat and a failed revolution ripped apart France’s social and political fabric and made the duties of artists all the more urgent and seemingly impossible. How could artists make works of art that spoke to this fractured society? The strategy used by Mercié in Gloria Victis was one possible solution: go back to art’s most enduring traditions, namely the use of the depersonalized nude body to express universal values. In addition to the not-quite-dead male nude warrior who defiantly thrusts his broken sword, Mercié instilled his sculpture with a sense of fortitude by creating a dynamic spiral composition that is vertical in orientation. The upright female figure who boldly strides forward keeps the warrior aloft: in so doing, she helps secure the heroic and defiant attitude of the sculpture that helped to ensure its value to the French publics who would have viewed it at the Salon exhibition of 1874 and in the public square in Paris where it was placed until the early 20th century.

The devastating Franco-Prussian war (1870–1871), which was immediately followed by the violent civil strife of the Paris Commune (1871), left France scarred and humiliated. This sculpture was made in the aftermath of the two moments of bloody national trauma and can be understood as reckoning with the shocks of the battles. A winged female figure supports over her shoulder a nude man, who loosely clasps a broken sword. These allegorical figures suggest resilience and heroism, despite the warrior’s evident weakness. As the French public, much like its leaders, sought to recover from the violence of the 1870s, this sculpture formulated a sense of noble national identity rising from defeat.

From the 2023 exhibition Recording War: Images of Violence 1500 – 1900, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

ARTH 51, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Katie Hornstein, Fall 2012

ARTH 51, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Katie Hornstein, Fall 2012

WRIT 5, Poor Taste, William Boyer, Winter 2014

FREN 8, Exploring French Culture and Language, Annabelle Cone, Spring 2014

FREN 8, Exploring French Culture and Language, Annabelle Cone, Fall 2014

FREN 8, Exploring French Culture and Language, Annabelle Cone, Winter 2015

SART 23, Figure Sculpture, Leslie Fry, Spring 2019

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 34, Images of War, Christina Duncan Evans, Class of 1954 Intern, Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 24-December 3, 2006.

Emulating Antiquity: Nineteenth-century European Sculpture, Engles Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-February 16, 2020.

Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, August 24, 2002-September 21, 2003.

Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, June 8-August 15, 1999.

Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, August 26, 1999-May 1, 2000.

Recording War: Images of Violence, 1500-1900, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 20-December 9, 2023.

The Beauty of the Bronze: Selections from the Hood Museum of Art, Gene Y. Kim Class of 1985 Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 13, 2012-March 18, 2014.

Publication History

T. Barton Thurber, European Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2008, pp. 92-93, ill. pp. 92/93, no. 43.

Provenance

Steve Newman, Stamford, Connecticut; sold to present collection, 1999.

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Subjects