Untitled 1778

Curator: Immediately, I'm struck by this overwhelming sense of... seriousness. Editor: Precisely! This is an untitled terracotta medallion, crafted in 1778 by Jean-Baptiste Nini. Its Neoclassical style places it within a pivotal moment in French history and aesthetics. The piece is currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Curator: It does have that formal air of the era, doesn't it? But there's something almost fragile about it too. Like a memory pressed into clay. Editor: Yes, there's a deliberate invocation of Roman aesthetics visible in Nini’s creation of profile portraiture and the Latin inscription. Curator: I see what you mean, the writing circling feels a bit like a coin or roman pottery... The details are so precise; it’s as if he's trying to immortalize the sitter, not just represent them. Editor: Consider the implications of that desire for immortality. This piece not only exemplifies the Neoclassical obsession with order and reason but also intersects with questions of power and legacy. It asks us, "Who gets to be remembered and why?" Curator: Which brings me back to my first feeling, about it being... weighty. Not just literally, but in its intent. Though what I am drawn to, against all that, is the subject’s hair—so life like and seemingly unruly in comparison to the carved profile and circular composition. Editor: That juxtaposition is brilliant. The unruly hair serves as a point of entry to address how gendered and racialized societal standards of beauty, as represented here in idealized European portraiture, often fail to fully capture human experience. How the subject is rendered with an emphasis on civic virtue… Curator: All of which hides, and is belied by that single, wandering tendril. It’s almost mischievous, isn’t it? Editor: Almost as if it knows what you are thinking…a final thought for our audience about such questions about legacy and power this sculpture makes me think about? Curator: Precisely! The power to define, to remember, and to question those definitions—that's what I'll take away from it today.