Time Revealing Truth
Giacomo Antonio Ponsonelli or Honoré Pellé (1649-1735; 1641-1718) · c. 1700
An old winged man, Time, lifts a veil away from a young woman who is Truth, and the whole group rises to well over two metres. The sculptor cuts deep into the marble so that drapery and wings seem caught in a gust rather than fixed on a base. Look for the contrast between the sinewy, bearded body of Time and the smooth figure he uncovers: it is the standard allegory of the Baroque, truth brought to light by the passing of years, treated with the theatrical energy of Genoese sculpture around 1700.
The group was carved in Genoa and bought at the end of 1699 or early in 1700 through the marble merchant Jérôme Derbais, who was then supplying the blocks for Coysevox's Fame and Mercury on Pegasus, the great winged horses destined for Marly. The royal accounts paid Derbais on the twelfth of June 1702, and the marble was set up in the park of Marly at the centre of the square that took its name, the Place du Temps. Sent to Bolbec in Normandy in 1795 with its pedestal, it came to the Louvre as a deposit in May 2005.
Did You Know? It was bought in the same order as the marble blocks for Coysevox's winged horses, now in the Louvre's Cour Marly.
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