A FRENCH MARBLE FIGURE OF THE SEATED MERCURY

The present model is after the original terracotta of Mercury Attaching his Talaria of 1740, by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-1785), now in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The French Academy requested a version of the figure in marble, completed in 1741-42, now in the Louvre, Paris. It is upon this that the present plaster model is based.