Seated Mars, known as the Ludovisi Ares
Luigi Valadier (1726-1785) · 1780
The god of war sits at rest, one knee drawn up, his hands clasped around it, his sword and shield set aside, his head turned pensively. A small Cupid plays at his feet. The figure is a full-size bronze copy of one of the most admired antiquities in Rome, the marble Ares acquired by the Ludovisi family in sixteen twenty-two and now in the Palazzo Altemps. Walk around it and look at the deep black patina of a figure nearly two metres tall. On the plinth the founder signed in French: C. Louis Valadier, Rome, seventeen eighty. Luigi Valadier was the leading Roman goldsmith and bronze founder of his generation, and the French spelling of his name announces who his customer was.
The customer was the Comte d'Orsay, a rich Parisian collector, who had the bronze cast in Rome in seventeen eighty and installed it in his mansion on the rue de Varenne. During the Revolution it was inventoried there in April seventeen ninety-four, seized the following winter and reserved for the new museum. In eighteen forty it was placed in the vestibule of the governor's lodging at the Invalides, and it entered the Louvre around nineteen thirty-five.
Did You Know? The founder signed his name in French, Louis rather than Luigi, to flatter his Parisian client.
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