Lion with a Snake
Antoine-Louis Barye (1795-1875) · 1832 (cast 1835)
A lion pins a snake to the ground with its forepaw and turns on it with a snarl, every muscle tensed for the kill. Barye had studied the animals of the Paris menagerie for years, and the bronze shows it: the loose skin over the shoulder, the ripple of the flank, the coiled snake that seems about to strike. Look at the signature Barye 1832 on the front of the base and, at the back, the founder's inscription recording that Honoré Gonon and his two sons cast the piece in 1835, using the lost-wax method that Gonon had revived.
The plaster model caused a sensation at the Salon of 1833, and King Louis-Philippe ordered a bronze the same year. Exhibited again at the Salon of 1836, it was placed that year in the Tuileries gardens, where the public read it as a political image: the lion of the July Monarchy crushing the serpent of sedition. It stood outdoors for seventy-five years before entering the Louvre in 1911, and it remains the work that made Barye the founder of modern animal sculpture.
Did You Know? Contemporaries read the lion as King Louis-Philippe himself, crushing the serpent of revolution.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.