Gipsmodellen voor beeldhouwwerken op het Palais du Louvre: links "Champaigne" door Jean Louis Adolphe Eude en rechts "Puget" door Antoine Etex c. 1855 - 1857

Edouard Baldus captured these photographs of plaster models for sculptures at the Palais du Louvre. On the left, "Champaigne" holds a scroll, an attribute denoting knowledge, while on the right, "Puget" is portrayed with a sculpting tool, signifying his craft. These symbols echo through time. Consider the scroll—it appears in classical depictions of philosophers, medieval illustrations of scribes, and Renaissance portraits of scholars, each time adjusted to convey a specific kind of learnedness. Similarly, the sculpting tool harkens back to ancient portrayals of Hephaestus or Vulcan, the blacksmith gods, whose tools symbolized creative and transformative power. We see a recurrence in this motif, with an emotional weight and a subconscious reverence for creation. The image powerfully taps into our collective memory, as we see this cyclical progression, resurfacing and evolving.