THOMAS, Gabriel-Jules

The picture shows the stalls entrance in the Op�ra in Paris. In this pair of caryatides, materialistic extravagance is allied to imaginative restraint in a combination typical of much Second Empire decorative sculpture.

In France, one of the largest field open to restoration was offered by the churches destroyed in the Revolution. Viollet-le-Duc adopted a rigorous approach to his restoration work. However, on the fa�ades of Parisian churches, where many sculptures were put back under the Second Empire, the execution of such statues sometimes appears more whimsical.. Certainly, Gabriel-Jules Thomas took the trouble to impart an element of mannerism to his Stoning of St Stephen for the church Saint-�tienne-du-Mont, Paris.

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.