PUGET - MILO OF CROTON

• Pierre Puget, Milo of Croton, begun in 1671, completed in 1682
• Key facts:

  Size: H. 269cm Medium: Carrara marble

  Location: Originally in the gardens of the Château de Versailles, France, now Musée du Louvre, Paris (where it has been since 1820).

  Patron: Jean-Baptiste Colbert (French politician for the ministry of King Louis XIV); the work was approved by the King and given a prominent position in the gardens at Versailles.
• Description:

  Milo of Croton was a legendary 6th century Greek wrestler and several times champion of the Olympic and Pythian Games. According to tradition, as an old man, he wished to test his strength by splitting a tree trunk that he found already cleft. His hand remained caught in the stump and he was devoured by wolves. Puget replaced these animals with the nobler creature of a lion and created a composition imbued with Baroque dynamism and drama. Milo's body is writhing in anguish at the pain.
• Iconography: the cup

  A legendary Greek wrestler who won at successive Olympic Games, the cup at his feet shows that in age he’s lost his strength. The cup is a symbol of human glory and Milo’s has now fallen. The theme maybe described as ‘brawn’ over ‘brains’.
• Iconography: the lion

  Emblems and devices were so important, in fact, that in 1663 Louis XIV’s superintendent of buildings (and later minister of finance), Jean-Baptiste Colbert, founded the Academy of Devices and Inscriptions. The primary goal of Colbert’s academy was to design emblems that would be incorporated into the borders of tapestries.1 These emblematic devices were used to story tell, moralise, and, further empower the King. The substitution of the wolves for a lion was no doubt because the lion was a timeless symbol of strength and majesty.
• Composition and light

  Milo's writhing, aching body is an immense zigzag: a succession of three diagonals decreasing in size, culminating with his head thrown back in a cry of agony. The body is arched against the tree trunk that forms the axis around which the composition pivots. In the centre, two large openings were cut into the marble in order to detach the athlete's silhouette from the background. This hollowing-out of the base is a rare occurrence in sculpture and represents a technical feat.
• Composition and light

  Despite its dynamic composition to capture a transient moment, its parallel lines create a regular pattern which smacks of Classicism. Indeed, it’s precisely the restraint of the characteristically expanding Baroque style which marks this work as French Baroque.
• Style

  French Baroque (restrained and more Classically-inspired Baroque)
• Colour

  white Carrara marble to signify the Classical and learned past of Antiquity.
• Puget’s Milo is typical of the Baroque style generally according to Jean H Duffy , who claims that two types of expression are ‘recurring patterns’ in the Baroque across Europe: the ‘open mouth’ and the ‘rolling eyes’; both of which are expressed here.
• Materials and processes

  Marble is a traditional material in the Western canon and the entire Renaissance was based upon the perceived elegance and purity of the figures and buildings of Antiquity. The medium imparts connotations of nobility, purity and status.
• Materials & processes

  Puget has used the reductive method (taking stone away) in the direct carving process. Puget has not particularly exploited marble’s low-tensile properties with this restrained composition and this is a point of departure from Bernini in Italy.
• Materials and processes

  The stone is fairly, rather than highly polished; however, there is attention to the differentiation of texture: the lion’s fur and thick mane contrast quite notably with Milo’s flesh. The folds in Milo’s drapery are deeply carved (undercut) and lend dynamism to the scene. The lion’s mane is also made to bounce, lending animation to a violent scene and this has probably been achieved using a hand drill.
• Materials and processes

  His mouth is gaping in anguish at his impossible escape and this has also been achieved using a hand-drill. Puget would have used a mallet (a hammer with a broad, barrel-shaped head) and chisel (a pointed metal tool with a sharp end). Claw chisels (with teeth) were used to take away small amounts of material and flat chisels used to smooth out. Rasps or files would render chisel marks virtually invisible before wet or dry ‘sandpaper’ was used to polish in varying degrees.