FABISCH, Joseph-Hugues

French sculptor. In 1840, he settles in Saint-Étienne where he is professor of drawing at the university of the city. He leaves the city for Lyon in 1845 where he becomes professor of the École des Beaux-Arts.

In 1852, he executes the Virgin surmounting the vault of the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière in Lyon, realized in his workshop at the bank of the river Saone. Because his workshop was flooded, the inauguration of the statue was postponed until the 8th of December, since then on this day the Fete of Light is celebrated in Lyon.

In 1863 he goes to Lourdes to visit Bernadette Soubirous describe to him her visions of the Virgin Mary. Fabisch executes a statue of the Virgin intended for the crypt of the Basilique of the Immaculate Conception at Lourdes. The statue, the masterpiece of the artist, is consecrated on April 4th 1864 in the presence of twenty thousand people.

In 1874, he becomes director of the École des Beaux-Arts of Lyon of which he was professor since 1845.

Beatrice

This work was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in 1855.

Literary subjects were held in particularly high esteem by Romantic artists. In the front rank of such subjects were those drawn from Dante. Ever since it was written in the early fourteenth century, the Divine Comedy had enjoyed extraordinary favour in the field of plastic arts. Romanticism breathed new vigour into it, delighting particularly in the association between Virgil and Dante. It saw the former as the very embodiment of the elegiac poet, in contrast to the somber, tormented genius of the latter. Conversely, Neoclassical artists favoured exclusively the Latin poet.

The admiration that the Romantic felt for Dante also extended to Beatrice of whom Fabisch modeled a graceful if hardly distinctive image under the Second Empire. However, she stood for too pure a love to hold the interest of Romantic artists for long.

Beatrice

Virgin and Child