Cast gunmetal medal of Louis XIV of
France by Jean Warin
Paris, AD 1665
Bernini's façade of the
Louvre
By 1665 Jean Warin, sculptor, medallist and
controller of the Paris Mint, was to be found living in an hôtel
next door to the Mint (itself attached to the Louvre). He was
enormously rich and also owned several other properties in the
area. Louis XIV's decision to extend the Louvre must
therefore have come as a blow when it became clear that some of
Warin's houses would have to be demolished (with minimal
financial compensation) to make way for the new building. In
addition, the king had invited the renowned Italian sculptor and
architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Warin's perceived rival, to
design the palace. Warin was called upon to execute the foundation
medal for the project. His resentment can only have been increased
by Bernini's rush to return to Rome, so that there was not
enough time to engrave dies to make the desired struck medal. In
fact, its production seems to have provoked an unpleasant artistic
tug-of-war between the two
artists.
Warin at first
claimed that the entire façade could not be reduced to the size of
a medal, and was only convinced when he was shown a drawing to the
correct scale. On producing the medal he was criticised not only
for leaving out some of the windows and substituting columns for
pilasters but, by Bernini himself, for the medal's
excessive relief. This exceptionally high relief may however have
been deliberate, a first shot by Warin in his attempt to surpass
Bernini in the arena of the three-dimensional sculpted portrait
bust for which the Italian was so famous. It was immediately noted
that the portrait on the medal looked like such a bust. This was no
coincidence. Warin had decided to execute a marble portrait of the
king in direct competition with Bernini. On the bust's
completion, Bernini, then in Rome, was informed that his enemies
were celebrating Warin's work as the most remarkable that
had ever been made.
M. Jones, A catalogue of the French me-1 (London, The British Museum Press, 1988)