Tripod (Athénienne)

Lauded as the most accomplished sculptor in post-Revolutionary France, Chinard is known for his stylized portrait busts as well as his allegorical, figurative statues and reliefs. Apparently unique to his production, this magnificent terracotta tripod features an undulating triangular base; goat-legged, winged female sphinxes wearing Phrygian caps; grimacing, bearded male masks; and a crenellated cylindrical top decorated with palmettes. Devoid of the more formulaic decoration seen on most neoclassical furniture from the period, the work is a feat of formal invention and technical virtuosity in which Chinard defies the often-arbitrary boundaries between sculpture and decorative arts through the intuitive combination of figurative sculpture and furniture design.




Chinard’s design for the tripod is a free, inventive composite derived from famous ancient bronze tripods that were excavated in Herculaneum and Pompei and illustrated in popular mid eighteenth-century French compendia of antiquities. Like his contemporaries, Chinard was energized by the excavations of the ancient Roman cities that had unearthed previously unknown statues and furnishings. The discovery of fresh classical vocabularies inspired new designs for furniture and sculpture alike. In France, athéniennes, or small tripods made in emulation of ancient Roman bronze tabletops, were de rigueur accouterments to Neoclassical interiors. Their notional functionality invited a variety of uses, from incense burner to flower stand, but they were primarily appreciated as works of art. Chinard’s terracotta tripod demonstrates the sculptor’s magisterial ability to combine diverse, classical figure types and decorative forms to create a strikingly novel composition in the antique mode.




Although the tripod’s exact purpose is unknown, it was probably created as a model for execution in another medium in relation to Chinard’s commission of 1793 for the city hall façade in his native Lyon. The plans originally included free-standing tripods, which were never realized. The appearance of Phrygian caps, the French revolutionary symbol of freedom, on the form secures its making to the early 1790s when Chinard returned to Lyon from Rome imbued with antiquarian knowledge and eager to create art expressive of his republican sympathies.