Chateaubriand

The Romantic period saw a considerable development of the portrait. David d’Angers, who executed more than six hundred busts and medallions, was undoubtedly the artist with the biggest output. Around 1830 he made a series of colossal busts in which he was mainly concerned with the moral character of his models, the great romantic figures, such as Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Goethe and Victor Hugo. The exaggeration of the forehead and the cranium, the arrangement of the hair which nobly frames the face of Chateaubriand or radiates around Goethe’s as if it were electrified, the contrasts created by accentuating the eye sockets and the wrinkles make these portraits symbols of the creative power of genius.