SERGEL, Johan Tobias

About 1770, sculptors firmly bound to the classical ideal began to emerge. The taste for heroic Classicism encouraged a more severe and historical style. The English sculptor Thomas Banks was preeminent among its proponents. The Swede Johan Tobias Sergel, the most gifted sculptor in the circle of the painter Fuseli, modeled his style on that of Banks, and he soon surpassed his mentor in the mastery of freestanding work. His Diomedes, showing the Greek hero resolutely moving forward on his guard against attack, is one of the masterpieces of heroic classical style.

Commissioned by the city of Stockholm to make a monument for King Gustavus III of Sweden, Sergel presented the first sketch in 1790, and one year later a proportional model in plaster. After the full-scale, no longer extant model was completed in 1793, it took six more years for the bronze to be cast, the unveiling taking place only in 118108. In designing his portrait statue, Sergel was inspired by one of the most famous of classical statues, the Apollo Belvedere, but the figure of Gustavus, which is in imaginary ancient military dress that echoes contemporary clothing as well, is the wrong way round compared with the distinguished model. The free leg of the model becomes the engaged leg, while the drapery over the right arm of the king corresponds to the cloth around the outstretched left arm of Apollo. Finally, the taut physicality of the young, muscular archer of Antiquity becomes a rather slack pose of a ruler in the transition between the late Baroque and Neoclassicism.

As a patron of art and literature, Gustavus III had founded the Royal Opera in 1773, and in 1776 the Swedish Academy, on the French model. He was also a man of letters who wrote plays and operas. His foreign policy was aimed at weakening the ant-Swedish alliance between Denmark and Russia. This led to his declaring war on Russia in 1788, which ended in 1790 in the Treaty of Värälä without any territorial changes. Depicted by Sergel at the moment of landing from the campaign, Gustavus supports himself with his left hand on a a kind of commemorative stone, holding the laurel wreath of the victor. In his right hand he holds the olive bough of peace (lost on the model), indicating the intention and success of his campaign.

In 1767 the Swedish artist was granted a state scholarship to Rome, where he made numerous terracottas on myhtological themes and developed his own Neoclassical style in contact with artists from so many other countries.

This is one of the Neoclassicist works executed by Sergel during his stay in Rome.

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