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Pair of bronze medallions representing the bust of Jean-Jacques Rousseau*** "Citizen of Geneva Born June 28, 1712" and the bust of Voltaire** "BORN ON XX. FEBRUARY MDCXCIV", engraver Waechter*, circa 1770 XVIIIth century.
These medals are in good general condition, in their juice. They are presented in posterior rosewood frames.
A note: wear and scratches on the medals, see photos.
was a German medalist. He was the son of oboist Heinrich Waechter and Anna Maria Ritterin. Wæchter was a pupil of Jean Dassier in Geneva and established himself after the end of his apprenticeship as a medal engraver in Mannheim. When his older brother Johan Georg Wæchter, active in Russia, needed additional help, he went there in 1771. Together they won several medals for various Russian clients. After having lost all his possessions in Russia under unclear conditions, he appeared in Stockholm in 1786. He unsuccessfully sought support from Gustave III and a place as a medal engraver at the Mint. He requested in 1789 an advance for the execution of two medals on the state vault of 1789 and the naval victory of Duke Karl, but probably none of these medals were produced. In order to earn a living, he announced in 1790 in the Stockholm newspapers that he was making stamps, wax portraits and teaching young people wax modeling in his house in Norra Smedjegatan in Stockholm. His most famous work is a medal on Voltaire which he made in 1769-1770, but of his stay in Sweden no medal is known. Wæchter is represented, among other places, in the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge.
François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire(1694 -1778) is a writer and philosopher who marked the 18th century and who occupies a special place in the French collective memory. He sketches the figure of the intellectual committed to the service of truth, justice and freedom of thought. Emblematic figure of the France of the Enlightenment, leader of the philosophical party, his name remains attached to his fight against "the infamous", the name he gives to religious fanaticism, and for progress and tolerance. He is however a deist and his ideal remains that of a moderate and liberal monarchy, enlightened by the "philosophers". He also acts with the enlightened elites of Europe of the Enlightenment by using his immense notoriety and takes, alone, the defense of the victims of religious intolerance and arbitrariness in cases that he has made famous. .
French-speaking writer, philosopher and musician from Geneva. The life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a life of independence and instability. He first left Geneva at the age of sixteen for Savoy before arriving in Paris in 1742, thinking of a career in music. He then leads a difficult existence, seeking various protectors and living with Thérèse Levasseur who will give him five children. At the same time he meets Diderot and writes articles on music for the Encyclopédie. Rousseau enters the history of ideas with his brief essays. Having taken the opposite view of the philosophy of Hobbes, he nevertheless knows that a return to the origin is impossible and he pursues a reflection on the functioning of a democratic society based on the Social Contract (1762) in which the sovereign people organize collective life. . In the literary field, the contribution of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is also decisive with Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), a novel by letters on the English model of Paméla ou la Vertu rewarded by Samuel Richardson, which will be one of the biggest prints. of the century. Thus, the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is it major as well in the field of the political philosophy by nourishing the reflection on the democracy as in the field of the literature.
