The Seine and the Marne
Nicolas Coustou (1658-1733) · 1699-1712
Two rivers meet in one block of marble. The Seine, a powerful bearded river god, leans back against a rocky bank, while the Marne, a young woman, reclines beside him. Water spills from an overturned urn, and the base is strewn with the produce of the river valleys: fruit, reeds and the fish and boats that hint at the traffic of the great waterway that flows through Paris. Walk around the group; it was carved to be seen from every side at the edge of a pool, and the two figures answer each other across the rock.
Nicolas Coustou, elder brother of the sculptor of the Marly horses, made a small wax model in 1699, then a full-size plaster that was set up at Marly the same year. The marble was carved between about 1703 and 1712 for the Nappes, the terraced cascades of the park, as a companion to Corneille van Clève's Loire and Loiret. Coustou signed the back of the rock with his name and the date 1712, and the group was probably finished on the spot. It went to the Tuileries gardens in 1719 and entered the Louvre in 1993.
Did You Know? Nicolas Coustou signed the rock in Latin as a native of Lyon, the city where both Coustou brothers and their uncle Coysevox were born.
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