This plaster bust, by Jean-Robert Nicolas Lucas de Montigny, represents Antoinette Clavel known as Saint-Huberty in the role of Iphigenia in 1784.
A veritable diva, Clavel was one of the most well-known opera singers of the Enlightenment. Her interpretations of operas by Puccini, Lemoyne or Gluck, for example, charmed not just France but the whole of Europe. She also made several noteworthy appearances in Bordeaux between 1782 and 1784 when the Academy of Music in Bordeaux invited her to perform some opera extracts and to sing some short arias. It was at this time that the sculptor Lucas de Montigny made her effigy.
He has captured both the expression of her song and the dramatic intensity of her face. Not without reason, Montigny paid particular attention to her ancient-style costume; in fact, Clavel was the first opera singer to wear this kind of costume on stage, in order to be in perfect harmony with the historical characters she played. A pupil of Pigalle, Lucas de Montigny led an active career as a portrait artist and regularly exhibited at the Salon from 1791 to 1808.
Throughout his career, he sculpted many busts of philosophers, such as Voltaire and Rousseau.