Bust of a Woman

This is one in a pair of polychrome busts produced in emulation of the late work of Nicolas Cordier (1567-1612). Trained in Saint-Mihiel in the workshop of the Richier family, Cordier ("il Franciosino") traveled to Rome in 1592, where he lived and worked until his death in 1612. By 1600, Cordier had garnered significant attention for his talent as a marble carver and restorer of antique sculpture. Between 1607 and 1612, he created a polychrome statue, called Il Moro (Louvre, Paris), using an antique torso as a base, for Scipione Borghese, the Cardinal Nephew of Pope Paul V. The black marble head of Cordier’s figure was evidently modeled after a bust of an African Man now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, tentatively dated to the second century CE.

This bust of a woman of African descent forms a pair to the bust of a man (2019.283.32) carved after Cordier’s full-length figure of Il Moro. The latter exemplifies the tradition of taking busts from full-length figures that was popularized in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The European taste for sets, or pairs, of decorative objects, including sculpture, most likely inspired the creation of this pendant. Together, the busts crucially represent the legacy of the Renaissance revival of ancient representations of Moors. Boldly colorful and the very embodiment of classical taste, the pair of busts probably functioned as decoration within a grandly embellished interior of the period.