132 years ago, on 14 January 1891, the sculptor Aimé Millet passed away. As we saw in the previous article, we owe him Apollo surrounded by Poetry and Music, the emblem of the Paris Opera. The architect Charles Garnier expressed his admiration for this outstanding work, of impressive dimensions and the result of 18 months' work and stressed that "to the respect due to work, we must add that due to talent". Let's go and find out about Aimé Millet's Parisian works, which bear witness to the trends and styles in vogue during the Second Empire and the Third Republic, as well as the far-reaching changes that marked the 19th century, such as the development of education, the industrial revolution and the associated technical progress, the development of trade and the birth of a modern banking system, the opening up to the world and the fascination with civilisations from all over the world. Let's start with 85 rue de Vaugirard, in the 6th arrondissement, where a building dating from 1850 housed a school practising a teaching method, born in the United Kingdom, which spread to many European countries at the beginning of the 19th century: mutual tuition. In the high relief on the front of the building, the sculptor, who was at the beginning of his career (he was born in 1819), has represented himself (on the right) writing on a board, in the company of two schoolchildren discussing over a placard with the inscription "love one another" and a schoolgirl looking on protectively at a younger child. The whole under the gaze of an allegory reminding us that the establishment was also at the time an institution for children aged 3 to 7 years.
Let us then move on to the Louvre, whose renovation and expansion under Napoleon III resulted in numerous commissions for statues of illustrious men or figures from Greek and Roman mythology. Millet created Louvois, Minister of Louis XIV (1857) on the Henri IV Wing in the Cour Napoléon, Mercury (1861) in the Cour Carrée and Terpsichore, Muse of the Dance (1865), on the Flore Wing in the Cour du Carrousel. In the neighbouring Tuileries Garden, we also find Cassandra putting herself under the protection of Pallas (1877).
Let us return to the transformations and events of the 19th century: Industry and Commerce are represented by the caryatids that frame the entrance to the Passage du Bourg-l'Abbé, rue de Palestro, 2nd arrondissement (1863), as well as by a statue of the physicist, mathematician and inventor Denis Papin (1880) in the courtyard of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. The craze for distant lands is illustrated by South America, one of the statues of the five continents that originally adorned the Palais du Trocadéro built for the 1878 Universal Exhibition, and are now displayed on the esplanade of the Musée d'Orsay. The joint development of international trade and finance is represented by the allegories on the facade of the Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris (1882), the ancestor of Banque Nationale de Paris, at 14 rue Bergère, 9th arrondissement. A tribute to the young French republic and the French people is paid by the Seine and the Marne (1883), which are part of the monumental pediment framing the clock of the Hôtel de Ville de Paris, a building entirely reconstructed after it was burnt down during the events of the Commune in 1871.
And finally, at the end of his life, the sculptor paid tribute to a very famous predecessor, the Greek sculptor (5th century BC) Phidias, posing in front of his work Athena Parthenos, which can be found in the Jardin du Luxembourg. A beautiful journey!
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