Chinard was the most gifted artist in Lyons during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These beautifully modeled statuettes - Chinard's earliest known documented works - were commissioned for the private chapel of the Charcot family at their estate near Lyons. Strongly influenced by the seventeenth century Italian Baroque style, the statuettes were conceived as finished sculptures, not as models for larger works in another medium.

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