Antoine Sartorio

Antoine Sartorio was born in Menton on 27 January 1885 and died in Jouques on 19 February 1988. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. His relationship with the Marseille architect Gaston Castel, students together at the École des Beaux-Arts, led to his involvement with the Santos monument Andradas in 1922, work on the Opéra de Marseille in 1924, the Marseille Monument de l'Armée d'Orient in 1927, the works La Méditerranée" and "La Durance" for the Cavaillon bridge in 1932, decoration on the Marseille Palais de Justice in 1933, work on the monument to Alexandre 1er de Yougoslavie in 1938 and the "sept péchés" for Marseille's Baumettes Prison, also in 1938. He also worked with Paul Tournon. As with most French sculptors he was commissioned after the 1914–1918 war to work on several war memorials such as those at Tournon-sur-Rhône and Menton. He also contributed sculptures to the Lycée Tolbiac in Paris and the Lycées Marseilleveyre and Périer in Marseille and worked on the restoration of the "Le Baptême de Clovis" for Reims cathedral from 1962 to 1966. In 1967 he left Paris and retired to Jouques. His work had been shown at the Exhibition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1925, at the "Exposition Coloniale de Vincennes" in 1931 and the "Exposition Universelle" in Paris in 1937.

• Name — Location — Date — Notes • Monument celebrating Brazil's independence — Santos — 1919 — Gaston Castel, who won the Prix de Rome for architecture in 1913, had been mobilized in 1914 and joined the 258th Infantry. He received bad facial injuries whilst fighting at the front and for the rest of the war was interned in Montreux. After the war he returned to Paris and was soon appointed as architect for Bouches-du-Rhône but before taking up this post he travelled to Brazil with Sartorio to work on this Santos monument. • Post and Communications building — Cachan — Sartorio's haut-relief "L'accueil" is located in the building's foyer. • Cimetière Saint-Pierre (Marseille) — Marseille — Sartorio is buried here. He also executed the decoration for the tomb of the tenor Lucien Muratore. • The Castel residence — Marseille — Sartorio worked with Gaston Castel on the decoration of his residence in Marseille's place du Lacydon. He also decorated the Castel family tomb in Pertuis cemetery. • The Pennes-Mirabeau tunnel — Mirabeau — Sartorio's bas-relief "La Fortune" decorates the entrance to this tunnel. • Gare Maritime — Marseille — 1955 — Sartorio, again working with Castel, added decoration to shed 4 of this old terminal. • Lycée Périer — Marseille — In the school's "cour d'honneur" is a bas-relief depicting Athéna. • Lycée Marseilleveyre — Marseille — 1956 — Sartorio executed a sculpture for the school's entrance and the work "Vers l'Espace" for the garden. • Pont Mirabeau — Jouques — The statues that decorated this bridge are still kept just by the bridge itself. The bridge was constructed in 1935 to cross the river Durance near the village of Mirabeau and Sartorio created four bas-reliefs representing the four "départements" which join at the location, Bouches-du-Rhône, Vaucluse, Var and Alpes de Haute-Provence. In 1988 the bridge was replaced but the bas-reliefs are on display at a round-about on the river's left bank. • Palais de Justice — Marseille — 1930–1933 — The designing architect Gaston Castel was commissioned to supervise the new Palais de Justice annex and building started in 1930. The building's main façade on the rue Pollak has two classical péristyles crowned by Sartorio friezes. • Monument commemorating Alexander Ist of Yugoslavia and Louis Barthou — Marseille — 1938 — This monument, carved from Lens stone, commemorates the assassination in Marseille of the Yugoslavian king and Bathou in 1934 and was given the name "Paix et Travail" by the designing architect Gaston Castel who used the services of Sartorio, Elie-Jean Vézin and Botinelly for the sculptural work. The inauguration took place in 1941. At the front of the monuments medallions depicting the two victims are held by allegories by Sartorio representing "La Justice", "Le Droit", "La Liberté" et "Le Travail". The monument stands on the corner of the Rue de Rome and the Avenue Paul Peytral in Marseille's 6th arrondissement. The Musée d'histoire de la Ville de Marseille hold the design drawings and the plaster maquette which was shown at the agricultural section of the Paris Salon and won the gold prize. • Monument to Abel Ballif — Saint-Raphaël in Var — 1934 — Perched on the side of the "Corniche de l'Esterel" is a bas-relief honouring the founding president of Touring Club de France. • "l'Afrique" — Palais de Chaillot — 1937 — This bas-relief is one of several commissioned from 57 sculptors to decorate the external walls of the Chaillot palace for the Exhibition in Paris of 1937. The relief is on the façade of the building which looks onto the rue Franklin. • "Les sept péchés capitaux" — Baumettes prison Marseille — 1938 — In 1930 the decision was taken to build the Baumettes prison in Marseille and Gaston Castel was appointed as the designing architect. Building took place between 1931 and 1940. Castel commissioned Sartorio to execute seven haut-reliefs for the prison entrance, these depicting the seven deadly sins. They were completed around 1938 and depicted "La Colère", "La Paresse", " La Gourmandise", "L'Orgueil", "L'Envie", "La Luxure" and "L'Avarice". In "La Colère" a sinister and menacing man squats with his back turned and is armed with a knife and in "La Paresse" another squatting figure evokes lethargy. In "L'Avarice" the subject holds a money box close to his chest clearly having no intention of surrendering it to anyone. "La Gourmandise" depicts a drunkard and in "L'Orgueil" the subject, an allegory of a peacock, looks admiringly into a mirror denoting the sin of vanity (pride). In "La Luxure" we see Eve tempted by the serpent. In Sartorio's "L'Envie", the subject simply "glowers". • Marseille Opéra Municipal — Marseille — 1921 — Sartorio was one of several artists, both sculptors and painters, to work on the opera house when a major reconstruction took place between 1921 and 1924, this after a fire had gutted the old building which dated back to 1787. Only the columns of the peristyle and the main walls escaped the fire. Sartorio completed four allegorical reliefs for the upper floor façade which surmounts the peristyle. The reliefs align with the Ionic columns and follow the inscription on the upper cornice ""L'Art reçoit la Beauté d'Aphrodite, le Rhyme d'Apollon, d'Equilibre de Pallas et doit à Dyonisos le Mouvement et la Vie.""roughly translated as "Art receives beauty from Aphrodite, rhythm from Apollo, balance from Pallas and owes movement and life to Dionysus". • Durance Suspension Bridge. — Cavaillon — 1932 — Four reliefs decorated the suspension bridge built over the river Durance in 1932 between Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône. Jean Lhomme sculpted the allegories of "Le Ventoux" and the "La Durance" on the Vaucluse side of the bridge and Sartorio the reliefs "La Méditerranée" and the "La Durance" on the Bouches-du-Rhône side. The bridge was blown up by the Germans in 1944 but plaster models can be seen in Cavaillon's local museum. • Monument to the Association Gueules cassées — Moussy-le-Vieux — 1957 — The monument stands at the entrance to the headquarters of the association Gueules-cassées based in the Château de Moussy and honours those who founded this association for those soldiers who suffered facial injuries in the 1914–1918 war. The inauguration in 1957 was officiated by René Coty the French president. It was to this building that the injured came to rest and convalesce between the various surgical operations undertaken to rebuild their faces. It was used again for those injured during the Second World War and those who suffered facial wounds in Indochina and Algeria. • Palais de la Méditerranée — Nice — 1928 — Built in 1928 on the Promenade des Anglais as a casino but now the Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Méditerranée hotel. Sartorio executed the bas-reliefs on the building's façade. Most of the original building was subsequently demolished but happily Sartorio's reliefs survived the changes. • "Le Rythme" — Lycée Claude-Monet.Paris — 1950 — This work is located in the lycée's hall.