Marly Horse: Horse Restrained by a Groom

Coustou signed the rock with the words G. Coustou fecit 1745, and under the saddle cloth a second name appears, Vandon compagnon, the journeyman who worked the marble alongside him. The full-size models were finished in August 1739 and listed at the Salon of 1740, although visitors had to see them in the studio. The marble blocks were ordered in November 1740 and shipped from Carrara through Marseille and Le Havre, reaching Paris in February 1743. Coustou carved them in his studio here in the Louvre, floated them by river to Marly in the summer of 1745 and finished them on site that December. Notice how deeply the mane and the rope are undercut.

The commission came from Philibert Orry, director of the king's buildings, who needed replacements for Antoine Coysevox's Fame and Mercury after those groups left Marly for the Tuileries in 1719; both are now in this same courtyard. In September 1795 the revolutionary government hauled the horses to Paris and set them at the entrance of the Champs-Élysées on the place de la Concorde, where they became a landmark of the city. Two centuries of weather and traffic wore the marble, and in 1984 the originals entered the Louvre, replaced outdoors by copies. Under the glass roof of the Cour Marly they stand once more among the sculptures made for the gardens of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth.

Did You Know? The name of a journeyman carver, Vandon, is hidden under the marble saddle cloth beside the master's own signature.