Jean-Antoine Houdon : Sculptor of the Enlightenment

Rating:
Summary: Astonishing book about a brilliant sculptor
Review: I saw the Houdon exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and it is astonishing--as is this gorgeous catalogue. Houdon's brilliance as a portraitist and psychologist shines through in his amazingly lifelike busts of Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton, Thomas Jefferson, Catherine the Great, Voltaire and many more. In fact, the book offers a veritable Who's Who-or Who was Anybody--in the second half of the eighteenth century. Rogues and nobility alike brought miraculously to life in stone. This volume is a must for anyone interested in French, European or American art and culture of the revolutionary period. Lavishly illustrated, it promises to be the definitive work on Houdon for many years to come.