54 - French school; XIX century.

French school; XIX century. "Tique" and "Diosa". Blued calamine and wooden bases. Measurements: 65 x 24 x 24 cm (x2). Pair of sculptures in bluing calamine on wooden bases, made in France during the nineteenth century, exemplifies with remarkable clarity the historicist taste and technical refinement characteristic of the French school of decorative sculpture of the time. Both figures-one identifiable as Tique (or Tyche), Greek goddess of fortune and prosperity, recognizable by her mural crown and attributes linked to the destiny of cities, and another female figure of less precise iconography but treated with identical classical solemnity-embody the elegant appropriation that French academicism made of the Greco-Roman mythological repertoire. The sculptures show meticulous modeling, especially evident in the treatment of the drapery, which falls in wide, flowing folds, and in the idealized anatomy of the bodies, which responds to the neoclassical canons disseminated in the French academies throughout the 19th century. The dark patina of the calamine, carefully applied to simulate bronze, gives the figures a strong and solemn sculptural presence, in keeping with the aesthetic of archaeological imitation that dominated the decorative production of the time, largely intended for bourgeois interiors that aspired to an ideal of classical culture. The figure of Tique, represented with serene bearing and restrained gesture, embodies the notion of stability and civic protection; her mural crown, formed by battlements, alludes to her role as guardian of the cities. The other figure, whose identification is not immediate, could also be associated with the allegorical or mythological sphere due to the theatricality of the gesture, the arrangement of the mantle and the presence of a circular attribute held in her hand, perhaps a symbolic pátera or disc, frequent elements in allegorical representations of virtues or secondary divinities. Overall, these sculptures are evidence of the technical expertise and stylistic rigor of the 19th century French school, characterized by its adherence to academic principles, its mastery in the reproduction of classical models and its ability to integrate archaeological scholarship and decorative sensibility in works intended both to embellish domestic spaces and to affirm a cultural ideal of classical affiliation.