PORTRAITS. BOIS DURCI, METAL. 19TH CENTURY.

Fifteen medallions with profile portraits. Hard wood, metal. 19th century. A set of tondos with a hanging ring displaying profile portraits of historical figures on the front and an inscription and number on the back. Bois durci is a paste of very fine sawdust (usually ebony or rosewood) mixed with albumen (blood or egg white) or gelatin, which was poured into molds to give the desired shape through pressure and heat. It was a technique patented in Paris in 1885 by François Lepage and has been widely used in the manufacture of small objects ever since. The sitters are indicated by name: “Prince Albert” (Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, consort of Queen Victoria of England), “Napoleon, Prince Imperial / né le Mars 1856” (Napoleon Eugene Louis Bonaparte, son of Napoleon III and Eugenie de Montijo), “Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour” (Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Italian statesman and important figure on the road to Italian unification), “F. Mendelssohn” (Felix Mendelssohn, German Romantic composer, conductor and pianist), “Michael Cervantes” (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the Spanish writer), “Napoleon II Empereur / 1859” (Carlos Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870), “St. Vincent de Paul” (Saint Vincent de Paul, French priest of the 18th century canonized in 1737), “Victor Hugo” (French Romantic poet, playwright and novelist, who was also an influential politician and intellectual of the 19th century), “J. Haydn” (the Austrian composer known as Joseph Haydn), “Rossini” (Gioachino Rossini was an Italian composer famous for his operas –The Barber of Seville, Othello, William Tell…-), “Pius IV POntifex Maximus” (Giovanni Angelo Medici was elected Pope of the Catholic Church with the name of Pius IV between 1559 and 1565), “Leopold I Roi des Belges” (Leopold Beorg Christian Friedrich was a German prince of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who became the first King of the Belgians in 1831), “WA Mozart” (the well-known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a German composer, pianist, conductor and teacher, master of classicism), “Beethoven” (Ludwig van Beethoven[a] was a German composer, conductor, pianist and piano teacher), “Victoria Queen of England” (Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901). Some private collections and institutions, such as the National Museum of Romanticism in Madrid, hold similar specimens to the present ones.

· Size: 11x11x1 cms.