Magazine: Summer 2013

Jacques Lipchitz's Acrobat on Horse (1914) was cast in lost wax (cire perdue) by Claude Valsuani, active in Paris from 1908 to 1940 and again after the war. It displays the fine black patina for which Claude was justly famous‚—"Valsuani black," dense, rich, and deep, is one of the most celebrated patinas of this foundry, and Acrobat on Horse is a prime example. X-radiography shows how beautifully cast the figure and horse are, with an even wall thickness containing a well-secured interior ceramic core. Because of the complexity of the shapes, there was some drift of the core especially at the outermost areas such as the acrobat's legs and the horse's raised hoof, resulting in some walls that are slightly thicker than others. The flat base, however, is sloppily cast. We can see large patches of secondary castings. We do not know if they represent the foundry's solution to lost wax casting of a flat element or whether they are repairs to an incompletely cast element.