Buffon
Buffon is a bronze statue in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes, created by French sculptor Jean Carlus in 1883. It portrays the Enlightenment naturalist seated in a formal pose. Its subject served as the garden’s intendant for nearly fifty years.
Carlus originally intended the monument for Paris’s Hôtel de Ville before it moved to the garden early in the twentieth century. The transfer brought it to the Jardin des Plantes. It was inaugurated in June 1909 during celebrations for the naturalist and Lamarck. His Histoire Naturelle appeared across forty-four volumes. The first volume appeared in 1749, ranging from astronomy to zoology.
The naturalist was born in 1707 and developed ideas about evolution and Earth’s age during the Enlightenment. Those ideas challenged the prevailing church doctrines of his time. The bronze monument underwent restoration during 2019. The seated figure rests on a lion’s pelt, the detail that defines this portrait.
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