Nature (La Nature)
Made of biscuit, or unglazed hard-paste porcelain, this depiction of a female allegory of Nature nursing a black child at one breast and a white child at another, is a rare example of biscuit sculpture made at Sèvres during the French Revolution. Boizot’s sculpture was only one of two other examples of abolitionist biscuit produced at the Sèvres manufactory beginning in 1789 with this example commemorating the abolition of slavery in the colonies in 1794. Revolutionary iconography often conflated ancient maternal figures such as Cybele, the Roman goddess of fertility and Artemis of Ephesus, the Greek mother-goddess cult figure often shown with multiple breasts. Boizot has invented a humanized yet stoic portrait of Nature with the six breasts typically found on ancient cultic statues, which allegorize the nourishment of the new French nation. Beyond its unusual experimental iconography, Boizot’s biscuit sculpture entwines race, the colonies, and women in ways that highlight these subjects’ relative absence in the predominant visual and textual discourses of the Terror.
Artwork Details
- Title: Nature (La Nature)
- Designer: Louis Simon Boizot (French, Paris 1743–1809 Paris)
- Manufactory: Sèvres Manufactory (French, 1740–present)
- Date: ca. 1794–95
- Culture: French, Sèvres
- Medium: Biscuit (unglazed hard-paste porcelain)
- Dimensions: confirmed: 9 5/16 × 7 3/8 × 7 3/8 in. (23.6 × 18.7 × 18.7 cm)
- Classification: Ceramics-Porcelain
- Credit Line: Purchase, Larry and Ann Burns Gift, in honor of Austin B. Chinn, 2024
- Object Number: 2024.342
- Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
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