Bust of an African Man at The Wallace Collection, United Kingdom

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This piece is placed at the Wallace Collection in London. The French sculpture is a highlight of this part of the collection, featuring Germain Pilon's magnificent bronze portrait bust of King Charles IX created around 1570, two marble busts by eighteenth-century sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, and an impressive assortment of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century bronzes, including portraits, mythological groups, and small-scale copies of famous contemporary sculptures. In eighteenth-century France, bronzes were produced to very high technical standards with much care given to their finish. They were highly valued for their lustrous dark surfaces, which complemented paintings especially well. The collection of Italian sculpture is also notable, featuring a significant group of Renaissance bronzes, including an exquisite Seated Venus by Paduan sculptor Giovanni Fonduli da Crema and several bronzes by or after the renowned Renaissance sculptor Giovanni Bologna. Among the marbles are Pietro Torrigiano's moving bust of Christ, made for Westminster Abbey, and Filippo della Valle's charming Cupid and Psyche, created in Florence around 1732. There are also important groups of sculptures in wood, ivory, and wax, including wonderful miniature carvings in wood and a small but very high-quality group of German Baroque ivories. The seventeenth century was the period from January 1, 1601 to December 31, 1700 in the Gregorian calendar. The seventeenth century falls within the Early Modern period in Europe and is characterized by the Dutch Golden Age, the Baroque cultural movement, the French Grand Siècle dominated by Louis XIV, the Scientific Revolution, and the General Crisis. This last is marked in Europe most notably by the Thirty Years' War, the Great Turkish War, the end of the Dutch Revolt, the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the English Civil War. Some historians extend the scope of the General Crisis to encompass the globe, as with the demographic collapse of the Ming Dynasty, China lost approximately 30% of its population. It was during this period that European colonization of the Americas began in earnest, including the exploitation of the silver deposits of Potosí in Upper Peru and Mexico, which resulted in great bouts of inflation as wealth was drawn into Europe from the rest of the world. European politics during the Crisis were dominated by the France of Louis XIV, where royal power was solidified domestically in the civil war of the Fronde, in which the semi-feudal territorial French nobility was weakened and subjugated to the power of an absolute monarchy through the reinvention of the Palace of Versailles from a hunting lodge to a gilded prison in which a greatly expanded royal court could be more easily kept under surveillance. With domestic peace assured, Louis XIV caused the borders of France to be expanded to include, among other regions, Roussillon, Artois, Dunkirk, Franche-Comté, Strasbourg, Alsace, and Lorraine. It was during this century that England's political system became unique in Europe – by the end of the century, the English monarchy had become a constitutional monarchy with limited powers, while the power of Parliament was increasing. Farther east in Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Edo period at the beginning of the century, starting the isolationist Sakoku policy that was to last until the nineteenth century. In China, the collapsing Ming Dynasty was challenged by a series of conquests led by the Manchu warlord Nurhaci, which were consolidated by his son Hong Taiji and finally consummated by his grandson, the Shunzi Emperor, founder of the Qing Dynasty. By the end of the century, Europeans were also aware of logarithms, electricity, the telescope, and microscope due to the work of the first scientists of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Pierre Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Robert Hooke, Francesco Redi, Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Leibniz, among other luminaries. (Credit: Wikipedia, Wallace Collection) This object is part of "Scan The World", a non-profit initiative introduced by MyMiniFactory, through which we are creating a digital archive of fully 3D printable sculptures, artworks, and landmarks from across the globe for the public to access for free. Scan the World is an open-source community effort, if you have interesting items around you and would like to contribute, email stw@myminifactory.com to find out how you can help.