Boreas Abducting Oreithyia at The Louvre, Paris

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This sculpture is one of four massive groups depicting a dramatic abduction, with another notable example being Saturn and Cybele by Regnaudin, commissioned specifically for the Palace of Versailles from French master painter Charles Le Brun in 1674. The four large group sculptures serve as powerful symbols of the four fundamental elements, this particular sculpture representing air. Alongside other sculptures featuring the seasons, times of day, continents, poems, and temperaments of man, it was placed alongside a diverse array of works at the Palace of Versailles. The scene depicted here is taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis, specifically the episode where Boreas, the fierce north wind, abducts Orithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, and whisks her away to his kingdom in Thrace. The model for this sculpture was created by Marcy between 1677 and 1679, but it wasn't completed until Anselme Flamen, a student of Marcy, finished working on it from 1684 to 1687. Initially placed at the Organgerie of Versailles in 1716, the sculpture was later relocated near the circular pond in the palace gardens before being moved permanently to The Louvre in Paris, where it remains on display today after undergoing restoration work between 2004 and 2006 by Pari Mutuel Urbain.