Hebe and the Eagle,

1846–57

This bronze is based on a large marble sculpture (Musée des Beaux-Arts,Dijon) commissioned by the city of Dijon, Rude’s birthplace. Rude was renowned for such stirring, politically charged works as Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (known as La Marseillaise; 1833) on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Near the end of his life, he sculpted two works, this one and Cupid, Ruler of the World (1848–57; also in the museum in Dijon), in homage to the sculptors of ancient Greece; they comprised what Rude called his “artistic testament.” Hebe, the goddess of youth and Jupiter’s cupbearer, holds up the divine beverage, ambrosia, as the eagle strains toward it like a pet dog begging for a treat. Her teasing smile and gesture of gentle restraint recall the playfulness of eighteenth-century Rococo art, a vein later exploited by even the most severe of political artists, Jacques-Louis David, in Cupid and Psyche (1817; Cleveland Museum of Art).