Neoclassicism in Toulouse : Bernard Lange
The years 1750-1800 were marked by the emergence of the Neoclassical movement, which appeared before the French Revolution and continued in sculpture until the mid-19th Century. Dominated in Europe by Canova, Neoclassicism is represented here by the work of Bernard Lange, a pupil of François Lucas. After obtaining prizes for anatomy and sculpture, Lange left for Rome where his discovery of antiquities made a profound impression on him. He remained there for sixteen years, receiving other artists who, like the sculptor Vigan and painter Joseph Roques, were often from Toulouse. After his return to Paris, he worked regularly as a restorer in the collections of antiquities owned by the central museum at the Louvre. In particular, he is attributed with the first restoration of the Venus de Milo, of which he presented a cast (now disappeared) to the town of Toulouse.
Faithful to the town of his birth, he regularly sent them models of his monuments or reinterpreted copies of antiquities such as the Jupiter-Soleil. The two versions of L'Amour et l'Amitié, together with Philopoemen à Sellasie, bear witness to his taste for antiquity. In 1826, he executed two funerary monuments dedicated to the memory of François Lucas and Virebent (both in the church of Saint-Jérôme). In the field of decorative sculpture, he worked on the site of the Louvre (L'Egypte montre le Colosse de Memnon and La Grèce montre l'Apollon pythien) alongside the main French Neoclassical sculptors, Cartellier, Lemot and Chaudet.
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