France Lighting the World (1865): Artwork and History

France Lighting the World (1865) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827-1875).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

In 1863 Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux received a major commission for the pedimental sculpture on the south side of the Pavillon de Flore at the Musée du Louvre, Paris. For this monumental work, he designed three allegorical figures of France seated on an imperial eagle (a reference to the Emperor Napoleon III), flanked by semi-recumbent nude males representing science and agriculture. These plasters demonstrate Carpeaux’s initial conception as it was presented to the commissioning architect; they also reflect his close study of the sculpture of Michelangelo.

Object facts

• Title: France Lighting the World
• Date: 1865
• Artist attribution: Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827-1875)
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Plaster
• Dimensions: 36.5 × 31 cm (14 3/8 × 12 3/16 in.)
• Type: Sculpture
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1957.245

Collection credit

Ada Turnbull Hertle Endowment

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.