TASSAERT, Jean-Pierre-Antoine
(b. 1727, Antwerpen, d. 1788, Berlin)

Catherine the Great as Minerva

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Marble
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Tassaert career in France was brief, for in 1774 he succeeded one of Clodion's brothers as court sculptor to Frederick the Great at Berlin. As well as decorative sculpture for Potsdam, he produced the Catherine the Great as Minerva Protectress of the Arts, a work more Flemish than French in its somewhat confused and untidy Baroque idiom, and altogether somewhat old-fashioned. The child symbolizing Painting is perhaps the most accomplished aspect of it.