Apollo and Child

The attribution of this group to Lambert-Sigisbert Adam, called Adam the Elder (1700–1759) is likely due to its confusing iconography and Adam’s known penchant for complicated allegories. The uncle of the sculptor Claude Michel, called Clodion, Adam was an accomplished and ambitious sculptor in his own right. He won the Prix de Rome in 1723 and made his early career in Rome restoring and copying antiques. His style was marked less by the influence of the antique and more by the baroque, and especially by the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). In 1733 he returned to Paris, where one of his numerous state commissions was to model a series of terracotta allegories of France and Louis XIV. The commission was declined and the statues were never realized.
There is, however, no record of a terracotta sketch of the present composition by Adam or his brothers, with whom he collaborated, Nicolas-Sébastian (1705–1778) and François Gaspard Balthazar Adam (1710–1761).4 Additionally, the awkward proportions and inexpert carving preclude the hand of the skilled eighteenth-century sculptor.