CHARLES-HENRI-JOSEPH CORDIER (1827-1905) Portrait of a young woman White marble and marble-onyx bust, coral earrings Signed "C CORDIER" on the reverse H: 60 cm on a marble pedestal Related work: - James Pradier, Buste d'une femme, marble, H.56 cm with its pedestal, signed J. Pradier on the edge, Genève MAH, inv.1984-131. Related literature: - Ss dir. Serge Lemoine, Laure de Margerie et Edouard Papet, Charles Cordier, l'Autre et l'ailleurs, 1827-1905, catalogue of the exhibition held at the Musée d'Orsay from 2 February to 2 May 2004, Edition de La Martinière, 2004, cat.449, p.201, - Claude Lapaire, James Pradier et la sculpture française de la génération romantique, catalogue raisonné, p.132, n°365 p. 393 and n°466 p.424. Although Charles Cordier is best known for his ethnographic sculptures, he was also one of the great portraitists of the Second Empire. Of the 612 works in his catalogue raisonné, 102 are ceremonial portraits commissioned by the French intelligentsia. Some of these busts combine historicist inspiration and naturalism, such as his portrait of Empress Eugénie, presented at the Salon of 1863, which represents "a daring first" in polychrome ceremonial portraiture. Like his portraits of the Empress and Baroness Betty de Rothschild (cat. 460), our spectacular bust combines technical innovation - with the use of marble-onyx, which he generally used to drape his ethnographic works - a sense of detail, with a highly accomplished hairstyle, and the more traditional language of the intimate, bourgeois portrait, imbued with soft, delicate modelling. If this currently unidentified bust is broadly similar to the Greek woman from Missolonghi (cat. 224 p.168), it could be the portrait of the Baroness de Rothschild, née Cécile Anspach (not illustrated cat. 461), or, more likely, the portrait of the Countess Rattazzi, not located and not illustrated in the artist's catalogue raisonné (listed under no. 449, p.201). The daughter of Sir Thomas Wyse and Laetitiia Bonaparte, Marie-Laetitia (1831-1902), a woman of letters and poet, married Prince Frederick of Solms in her first marriage, followed in 1863 by Count Urbain Ratazzi, a minister in the Piedmont government. Finally, in 1877, she married Luis de Rute for the third time. James Pradier painted a portrait of the 20-year-old girl before 1851, a portrait that has not been formally identified until now (see no. 466 in the artist's Catalogue Raisonné). Charles Cordier painted a portrait of "the Muse of the Alps", who held famous literary Salons in Paris and Aix-les-Bains, in 1865, when she had become Countess de Rattazzi. A comparison of these two portraits reveals striking similarities, even though they were produced a few years apart. Our bust can also be compared with the full-length portrait painted in 1858 by the Nice artist Carlo Garacci(1818-1895) (now in the Musée Masséna in Nice).