Torso of a Bearded Man, Haloed and Crowned, Holding a Wineskin
Unknown · c. 1150
A bearded man with a crown and a halo clutches a wineskin against his chest. Only the upper body survives, but the carving is confident: the beard falls in twisted strands, the eyes are wide and staring, and the folds of the tunic are cut in crisp ridges. Together with the companion torso beside it, the figure is usually identified as one of the Elders of the Apocalypse, the twenty-four crowned figures who surround the throne of God in the Book of Revelation. The wineskin is unusual and has led to the suggestion, no more than a hypothesis, that the figure could instead personify one of the winds.
Both torsos come from the upper storey of the facade of Notre-Dame-de-la-Couldre at Parthenay in Poitou, a church sold at the Revolution and largely ruined in the early nineteenth century. The reliefs were taken down after 1806 and ended up in a garden next to the church. In the early twentieth century the dealer Georges Joseph Demotte had the sculptor Boutron add legs to make them look complete; those additions were removed in 1947, restoring the fragments to their honest state. The Louvre bought the pair in 1914 and 1915.
Did You Know? A dealer once had new legs carved onto this torso to make it more saleable; the Louvre removed them in 1947.
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