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Lot Essay
Between 1906 and 1907, Constantin Brancusi focused on the subject of child portraits in his sculpture. He conceived two versions of the theme of the tormented child, or "Le supplice." The present sculpture shows the twisted bust of a young boy with his left arm folded below his breast. Le supplice II is also a bust format, cut just below the shoulders, but its focus is limited to the tormented child's head. In modeling these sculptures, Brancusi may have been influenced by Jules Dalou's Tête d'Enfant, which shares the same backward right tilt of the head and raising of the right shoulder. And he could also have been thinking of Medardo Rosso's work that he had seen when they exhibited together in the 1906 Salon d'Automne and with whom he may have been personally acquainted.
With Le supplice I Brancusi began his study of the simplification of the human portrait that eventually lead him to such abstract heads as Prometheus (1911) and Muse endormie (1909-1910). "Up to the time of the Stanescu monument (1907), Brancusi was outstandingly a portraitist; he studied the cast and worked from life and from photographs; he made excellent portraits (with speed, it seems) at school, on commission, and for reasons of his own...In his mature period, though the veridical portrait held no interest for him, the theme of the human head remained attractive and resulted in works whose number far exceeds that devoted to any other subject" (S. Geist, Brancusi, the Sculpture and Drawings, New York, 1975, pp. 16-17). Le supplice I is unusual within Brancusi's oeuvre for its overtly emotive character; the sculptor portrays the boy wincing in pain. His earlier busts Buste d'Enfant (1906) and Portrait de Nicolae C. Darascu (1906) also show their subject naturalistically posed and with severed limbs, but they lack the powerfully expressive effect of Le supplice I.
This cast of Le supplice I was purchased in 1909 by Dr. Constantin Levaditi, then a young French doctor of Romanian descent. Dr. Levaditi was living and working at the time as a biologist at the Pasteur Insitute in Montparnasse which was a short distance from Brancusi's studio. He was friendly with a group of art-lovers, who were also Romanian emigrés, that included the painter Teodor Pallady, Stefan Pospescu and Prinz Cantacuzene. The latter was also a close friend of Auguste Rodin, in whose studio Brancusi had worked in 1907, and it was he who first took Dr. Levaditi to Brancusi's studio. Dr. Levaditi acted as Brancusi's physician and in payment for his services Brancusi offered to give him this cast of Le supplice I. The doctor, who wanted to help his penniless compatriot, insisted on paying for it. The friendship between the two men continued through the end of Dr. Levaditi's life in 1953 and was also shared by his children and grandchildren who often visited Brancusi in his studio. During these years Dr. Levaditi became known as a leading virologist in Europe, and was noted for his research on a curative treatment for syphilis.
With Le supplice I Brancusi began his study of the simplification of the human portrait that eventually lead him to such abstract heads as Prometheus (1911) and Muse endormie (1909-1910). "Up to the time of the Stanescu monument (1907), Brancusi was outstandingly a portraitist; he studied the cast and worked from life and from photographs; he made excellent portraits (with speed, it seems) at school, on commission, and for reasons of his own...In his mature period, though the veridical portrait held no interest for him, the theme of the human head remained attractive and resulted in works whose number far exceeds that devoted to any other subject" (S. Geist, Brancusi, the Sculpture and Drawings, New York, 1975, pp. 16-17). Le supplice I is unusual within Brancusi's oeuvre for its overtly emotive character; the sculptor portrays the boy wincing in pain. His earlier busts Buste d'Enfant (1906) and Portrait de Nicolae C. Darascu (1906) also show their subject naturalistically posed and with severed limbs, but they lack the powerfully expressive effect of Le supplice I.
This cast of Le supplice I was purchased in 1909 by Dr. Constantin Levaditi, then a young French doctor of Romanian descent. Dr. Levaditi was living and working at the time as a biologist at the Pasteur Insitute in Montparnasse which was a short distance from Brancusi's studio. He was friendly with a group of art-lovers, who were also Romanian emigrés, that included the painter Teodor Pallady, Stefan Pospescu and Prinz Cantacuzene. The latter was also a close friend of Auguste Rodin, in whose studio Brancusi had worked in 1907, and it was he who first took Dr. Levaditi to Brancusi's studio. Dr. Levaditi acted as Brancusi's physician and in payment for his services Brancusi offered to give him this cast of Le supplice I. The doctor, who wanted to help his penniless compatriot, insisted on paying for it. The friendship between the two men continued through the end of Dr. Levaditi's life in 1953 and was also shared by his children and grandchildren who often visited Brancusi in his studio. During these years Dr. Levaditi became known as a leading virologist in Europe, and was noted for his research on a curative treatment for syphilis.