Silence

Auguste Préault created this roundel (a composition with a circular format) for the tomb of Jacob Roblès in Père-Lachaise, a Parisian cemetery. Departing from more conventional, comforting funerary imagery of the period—portraits of the deceased or melancholy images of mourning—Préault instead modeled a stark evocation of death. Here, a frail finger is raised to the lips of a deeply shrouded and skeletal face with heavy-lidded eyes, perhaps marking the frontier between life and death. The sculpture met with immediate acclaim upon its first exhibition and became an icon of Romanticism.