Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Design for a Token: Allegory of Peace and Justice triumphing over Strife or Discord

Edme Bouchardon
1698-1762

Design for a Token: Allegory of Peace and Justice triumphing over Strife or Discord

1738
sheet: 8 3/4 x 8 5/8 inches (224 x 222 mm); design area: 8 1/2 inches (210 mm), diameter
Red chalk on paper; ruled border in brown ink.
III, 94

Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.

Notes
This preparatory drawing for one of a series of tokens or "jetons" given by the King on New Year's Day is an allegory of Peace and Justice triumphing over Strife or Discord.
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed and dated in the same red chalk as the drawing within the roundel, "SALUS REI PUBLICAE 1738"; signed in pen and brown ink at lower right, "Ed: Bouchardon".
Summary

In his capacity as designer for the Académie des Belles Lettres, the position to which he was appointed in 1736, Bouchardon created designs for medals and tokens for the "graveur-médailleurs" who cut dies for the Royal Mint. The subjects and their Latin mottoes were chosen by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. The drawings were often mounted on blue paper and presented to the king, Louis XV, who had final approval. This drawing, which is the artist's submission for one of a series of tokens or jetons given by the king on New Year's Day, is an allegory of Peace and Justice triumphing over Strife or Discord. Three women represent the allegorical figures of Peace, holding an olive branch, Justice, holding an upraised sword and scales, and Strife, dead, her flaming torch beside her. A related drawing, "Sketch for a Medal Commemorating the Pacification of Geneva" (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, repr. Bean 1986, p. 31, no. 18) appears to be an earlier version of the Morgan composition. It has a more elaborate background, with pilasters, columns and a coat-of-arms, but is executed with a freer hand, in a less detailed manner. These drawings were executed in red chalk in order to make counterproofs, and there is a counterproof of the Morgan drawing in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

Associated names
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Bibliography
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, III, 94, repr.
Charles Fairfax Murray III, no. 94, repr.; Ames 1975 pp.383-4, fig. 4; 1986, p. 31 under no. 18.
Eisler, William. The Dassiers of Geneva: eighteenth-century European medallists. Volume II: Dassier and sons: an artistic enterprise in Geneva, Switzerland and Europe, 1733-1759, Lausanne and Geneva, 2005, pp. 65-73, 88-89 (p. 89, note 296).
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department