Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694–1778)

Jean Antoine Houdon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Empress Catherine II, a devoted admirer of Voltaire's writings, stimulated his cult in Russia. In response the philosopher dedicated a poem to her. Catherine's reply, dated October 15, 1763, initiated a correspondence that influenced her on many matters until Voltaire's death in 1778. She spared no costs to secure for her collection his library of seven thousand annotated volumes bound in red morocco that include most of his private papers and her own letters to him, most of which are preserved in the public library of Saint Petersburg. Catherine II commissioned several portraits of Voltaire. In 1784 the intriguing marble Voltaire Seated in an Armchair arrived from Paris and was ceremoniously installed in a grotto at Tsarskoye Selo castle, before it was moved to the Hermitage in 1805. This bust from the world-famous Stroganoff collection in Saint Petersburg was presumably acquired by Count Alexander Sergeyvitch Stroganoff directly from Houdon during the count's years in Paris from 1770 to 1779. It was displayed in Saint Petersburg along with Houdon's bust of Denis Diderot (see 1974.291).

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art