Edme Bouchardon

The three small sketchbooks, two of which are bound in limp vellum, comprising Edme Bouchardon's "Vade Mecum", have been housed in the Morgan Library for more than eighty years, but they have never been published. The sculptor Bouchardon is equally well-known as a draughtsman. Indeed, he is the only French sculptor of the eighteenth century who is known to have produced a body of drawings of equal importance. His drawings complement his sculpted work, making his artistic personality better known.
Born in 1698, Bouchardon traveled to Rome in 1723, where he studied for nine years before he was recalled to Paris by Louis XV. As a sculptor, he naturally gravitated towards all the monuments Rome had to offer. Most of the drawings in the "Vade Mecum" are executed in red chalk, which was always his medium of choice; however, a number are executed in pen and ink and/or black chalk or graphite. The sketchbooks contain many careful sketches of statues and monuments in Rome, including the Jonah in the Chigi chapel in S. Maria del Popolo (which Raphael designed and Lorenzetti carried out), Maderno's statues of saints ornamenting S. Andrea della Valle, and the turtle fountain in the Piazza Mattei, which dates to the sixteenth century. Bouchardon was not only interested in the earlier monuments of Rome but also included in his sketchbook drawings of contemporary work such as the sculptures for the tomb of Gregory XIII in St. Peter's, which Camillo Rusconi had just completed in 1723.
The second volume begins with a pencil sketch of a fountain by Giambattista Bologna and continues with several red chalk copies of Roman portrait busts, many of which are today in the Vatican Museum but which were then in the Palazzo Belvedere. There are also some sketches for the Fontana de Trevi. It is interesting to note in this connection that Bouchardon was one of the artists who entered the competition to complete the fountain. Eventually, one comes to perhaps the most striking opening in the book, the portrait study of a man holding his head in his hands. Although the man's eyes are closed, Bouchardon's own features are recognizable; his full-lipped mouth and aquiline nose can be compared with his self-portrait in profile, the counterproof of which is in the Louvre (inv. 787). This portrait is unique in the "Vade Mecum" and is followed closely by Bouchardon's copy of Bernini's bust of Cardinal Scipio Borghese.