Joseph Chinard

Who was Joseph Chinard?

Joseph Chinard was a French sculptor who worked in a Neoclassical style that was infused with naturalism and sentiment.

He received his early training in Lyon, as a painter, in the government-supported École Royale de Dessin, then worked with a local sculptor. His work at Lyon drew the attention of a patron who sent him to Rome, 1784-87. He sent back to Lyon copies of antiquities. In Rome he won a prize from the Accademia di San Luca, a signal honour for a non-Italian: his prize-winning sculpture, a terracotta Perseus and Andromeda remains in the collection of the Accademia.

He returned to Rome again in 1791, when his activities sometimes drew the attention of the authorities, especially given his espousal of Revolutionary ideas during the French Revolution; in 1791 he was interned in the Castel Sant'Angelo for two months, on the orders of the Pope, for an action that were viewed as subversive, the exhibition in terracotta of a model for the base of a candelabrum in which Apollo trampled underfoot Superstition. On his release in December 1792, he was expelled and returned to Dijon.