Ernest Christophe
Ernest Louis Aquilas Christophe (15 January 1827 – 14 January 1892) was a French sculptor. He was born in Loches, France, and died in Paris. He studied with François Rude and was a friend of the poet Charles Baudelaire.
Rude asked Christophe to help with a bronze tomb effigy for politician Éléonore-Louis Godefroi Cavaignac. The work is signed “Rude et Christophe, son jeune élève.”
In 1876 Christophe won third prize at the Paris Salon for Le Masque (The Mask). Two other sculptures, La Fatalité (Fatality) and Le Baiser suprême (The Supreme Kiss), were bought by the Musée du Luxembourg.
His best-known work is The Human Comedy. He submitted it to the 1876 Paris Salon, and it was shown in the Jardin des Tuileries in 1877. After restoration in the Louvre, it was moved to the Musée d’Orsay in 1986. The statue shows a semi-nude woman whose smiling face is really a mask hiding a sorrowful expression. Christophe called it The Mask, honoring Baudelaire’s poem Le Masque, which inspired him.
Le Fatalité, created in 1885, inspired poems by Leconte de Lisle. Christophe was close friends with José-Maria de Heredia, who became his testamentary legatee and later collected part of Christophe’s library after his death.
Ernest Christophe is buried in Batignolles Cemetery.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 11:14 (CET).