Photo: Klaas Herman Knol
Four sphinxes are lying at the base of the fountain (1806-08) by François Jean Bralle (1750-1832) on the Place de Châtelet. The column, modelled after Egyptian palm colonettes, is made between 1806 and 1808, to memorize several of Napoleon’s sieges under which the Battle of the Pyramids. When it was replaced between 1855-58, a plinth was added with four waterspitting egyptianesque sphinxes as a symbol of Napoleon’s so called siege in Egypt. Architect Gabriel Jean Antoine Davioud (1823-81) designed the quartet that Henri Alfred Jaquemart (1824-1896) sculptured. Based on the sphinxes from the allee in Luxor, despite the missing false beard. Also their mouths are open so the water spouts out elegantly: ‘the desert seems to be forgotten’.*
Literature:
Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art. Exh.cat. (Louvre) Paris, (National Gallery of Canada) Ottawa, (Kunsthistorisches Museum) Vienna 1994, p272.
* Humbert, Jean-Marcel, L’égyptomanie dans l’art occidental. Paris 1989, p.221.