MEDICAL INTEREST - FOUNDER OF HISTOLOGY 8083. DAVID D'ANGERS, BRONZE BUST OF DR. BICHAT. French, early 19th century. Signed David Dangers, with Barbedienne Foundry mark. (On the back center is "F. BARBEDIENNE. FONDEUR." and lower right is a round seal with a bearded head in the center and around it "REDUCTION MECHANIQUE COLLAS BREVETS".) An excellent early French bronze of an important figure in medical history. Dimensions 6 x 10 inches. In choice original condition with no repair, restoration or discoloration. Provenance: An extensive North Eastern collection, acquired at an upscale estate auction in the early 1980's. Francois-Xavier Bichat, French doctor and anatomist (Thoirette, 1771 - Paris, 1802). The son of a physician, he was born at Thiorette in the French Jura, and studied at Montpellier, Lyons and Paris, where he later taught, and was physician to the Hotel Dieu. He conceived the idea of the "tissues" of the body, existing in various organs and susceptible to disease in various ways. Based on numerous post mortems, he identified tissues as the basic units of life. He identified 21 types of tissues in his 'Anatomie Genearale' (General Anatomy) (1801) and his 'Traite des Membranes' (Treatise on Membranes), (1800), and may therefore be considered the founder of histology. He also studied pathology. He defined life as the sum of forces resisting death. David, Pierre Jean (1789-1856), usually called David d'Angers, French sculptor, was born at Angers on the 12th of March 1789. His father was a sculptor, or rather a carver, but he had thrown aside the mallet and taken the musket, fighting against the Chouans of La Vende. He returned to his trade at the end of the civil war, to find his customers gone, so that young David was born into poverty. As the boy grew up his father wished to force him into some more lucrative and certain way of life. At last young David succeeded in surmounting his father's opposition to his becoming a sculptor, and in his eighteenth year he left for Paris to study the art with a capital of only eleven francs. After struggling against want for a year and a half, he succeeded in taking the prize at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. An annuity of 600 francs was granted by the municipality of his native town in 1809, and in 1811 David's Epaminondas gained the prix de Rome. He spent five years in Rome, during which he became enamoured of the works of Canova. Returning from Rome about the time of the restoration of the Bourbons, he refused to remain in the neighborhood of the Tuileries, which swarmed with foreign conquerors and returned royalists, and accordingly went to London. Here Flaxman and others visited upon him the sins of David the painter, to whom he was erroneously supposed to be related. With great difficulty he made his way to Paris again, where a comparatively prosperous career opened upon him. His medallions and busts were in great demand, and orders for monumental works also came to him. One of the best of these was that of Gutenberg at Strassburg; but those he himself valued most were the statue of Barra, a drummer boy who continued to beat his drum till the moment of death in the war in La Vende, and the monument to the Greek liberator Bozzaris, consisting in a young female figure called Reviving Greece, of which Victor Hugo said: "It is difficult to see anything more beautiful in the world; this statue joins the grandeur of Pheidias to the expressive manner of Puget." David's busts and medallions were very numerous, and among his sitters may be found not only the illustrious men and women of France, but many others both of England and Germany countries which he visited professionally in 1827 and 1829. His medallions, it is affirmed, number 500. He died on the 4th of January 1856. David's fame rests firmly on his pediment of the Pantheon, his monument to General Gobert in Pre Lachaise and his marble Philopoemen inthe Louvre. In the Muse David at Angers is an almost complete collection of his works either in the form of copies or in the original moulds. As an example of his benevolence of character may be mentioned his rushing off to the sickbed of Rouget de Lisle, the author of the Marseillaise Hymn, modeling and carving him in marble without delay, making a lottery of the work, and sending to the poet in the extremity of need the seventy-two pounds which resulted from the sale. $4000