Study for "Silence" (c. 1780–89): Art, History and Details

Study for "Silence" (c. 1780–89) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis-Philippe Mouchy (French, 1734–1801).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

When originally acquired this work was understood as a sketch for the "Citizen," a figure for a monument to King Louis XV in the French city of Rheims by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle. In that work the figure of the "Citizen" appears at the base, opposite an allegory of law, underneath a sculpture of Louis XV. The attribution was changed, however, after research made evident that the museum's sculpture precisely matches the iconography for "Silence." Moreover, the figure differs considerably from Pigalle's final figure of the "Citizen," throwing the attribution to Pigalle in question as well. The work is now believed to be by Pigalle's close follower, Mouchy, because of its similarity to a sculpture completed in 1789 for Madame Pompadour called Silence, which currently resides in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris.

Object facts

• Title: Study for "Silence"
• Date: c. 1780–89
• Creator attribution: Louis-Philippe Mouchy (French, 1734–1801)
• Culture: France
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.5 x 15.3 x 16.4 cm (10 7/16 x 6 x 6 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1979.7

Collection credit

The Thomas L. Fawick Memorial Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Thomas L. Fawick Memorial Collection is on View in Year in Review Exhibition,” February 7, 1980, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1979." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (1980): 58-99.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.