Stolen CT USA 11-2012 FRANCE, PRETENDERS, Henri V., 1820-1883, Bronze medal

1820 France - “NAISSANCE DU DUC DE BORDEAUX” by Paul Joseph Raymond Gayrard (signed: GAYRARD. F.). Bronze medal issued by public subscription (on the initiative of Chateaubriand) commemorating the birth of the duc de Bordeaux. Obverse: the duchess of Berry half semi reclined on couch is brandishing her newborn naked child. Bust of her husband right (assassinated in 1820 - DIEU NOUS L'A DONNÉ (God gave him to us). Obverse exergue: NOS COEURS ET NOS BRAS SONT A LUI (our hearts and arms are for him). Reverse: the archangel St Michel defeating the devil - 29 SEPT 1820 (the birth-date (feast of St. Michael) Wurzb.1262 38.3mm 34.3gm Raymond Gayrard (1777-1858) was a French sculptor and medallist. He trained in Paris as a goldsmith with Jean Baptiste Claude Odiot before turning to the engraving of medals. About 1808 he joined the workshop of the gem-engraver and medallist Romain-Vincent Jeuffroy. In 1819 he showed his first work of sculpture, a marble statue in neo-classical style of Cupid Testing his Arrows at the Paris Salon. In 1823 he became medal-engraver to Charles X, and he remained a prolific engraver of commemorative and portrait medallions throughout his life. In 1829 he received an official commission for two seated marble statues representing the Power of the Law and Universal Suffrage for the courtyard of the Chambre des Députés, Palais Bourbon, Paris; these ponderous and academic works were not put in place until 1860. Gayrard was largely excluded from major state commissions during the July Monarchy (1830–48) because of his pro-Bourbon sympathies. Instead, he began to devote himself to religious statuary and funerary monuments in a neo-classical style; among these works is the tomb of his friend Denis-Antoine-Luc Frayssinous, minister of ecclesiastical affairs under Charles X (marble, 1844; St Geniez, Aveyron, parish church). He was also a portraitist, and produced several busts and medallions of private clients (examples in Rodez, Mus. Fénaille), as well as small-scale groups of children and animals with moralizing themes, as in Child, Dog and Serpent. Under the Second Empire (1851–70) Gayrard was much in demand as a medallist, but he received only one official commission, a bust of Napoleon III (marble, 1854; Paris, Acad. N. Médec.).