MOREL-LADEUIL, LEONARD (1820–1888), French goldsmith and sculptor, was born at Clermont-Ferrand. He was apprenticed first to Morel, a manufacturer of bronzes, under whom he became one of the most expert chasers, or ciseleurs, in France, and then to Antoine Vechte, to acquire the art of repoussé (q.v.)—the art in which he was to excel. He studied further under J. J. Feuchére and then attracted the notice of the comte d’Orsay and the duc de Morny, through whose recommendation the French government, desirous of popularizing the idea of the new Imperialism, commissioned him to produce the “Empire Shield.” Napoleon III. notified his warm approval, but the trade, annoyed that a craftsman should obtain commissions direct, resented the innovation and thenceforward boycotted the young artist, whose beautiful and poetic vase, “Dance of the Willis” (the spirits dancing round the vase, above the lake represented on a dish below) none would take. He was encouraged. nevertheless by a foreign dealer in Paris, Marchi, who employed him on statuettes, mainly religious in character, until 1859, when Messrs Elkington, in view of the great exhibition of 1862, engaged him to work in Birmingham for three years in repoussé, assuring him a free hand. Following his silver "Night” came “Day,” and then the “Inventions” vase, which placed him at once at the top of his profession. This was followed by the beautiful plateau called “Dreams,” which was subscribed for (£1500) by Birmingham as the town wedding-gift to the prince and princess of Wales. Morel-Ladeuil’s contract was then renewed for five years, but as a matter of fact he remained with the firm for twenty-three years at their London house, the first result being his masterpiece the “Milton Shield: Paradise Lost” (in repoussé steel and silver), which was the sensation of the Paris Exhibition. It was bought by the English government for £3000, and thousands of copies made by “galvanoplastie” or electrotype were sold and spread all over the world. Then after “The Months” came another masterpiece, the “Helicon Vase,” in steel, silver, and gold, priced at £6000, which in course of time was presented by the ladies and gentlemen of the royal house to Queen Victoria on her first jubilee. For the Philadelphia Exhibition (1876) Morel-Ladeuil produced “A Pompeian Lady at her Toilet,” following it in 1878 with the “Bunyan Shield,” a companion to the Milton. After putting forth his reliefs “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” “The Merchant of Venice,” and “Much Ado about Nothing,” in view of his failing health he retired to Boulogne, where he died of angina pectoris on the 15th of March 1888, and was buried with much ceremony at Clermont-Ferrand. His total work, apart from the productions of his youth, numbers 35 pieces, which richly reveal his elegant and refined fancy and grace, his feeling for correct and dainty ornament, and his love of pure art marked by an elevated if rather sentimental taste and a noble style.
See L’Œuvre de Morel-Ladeuil, sculpteur-ciseleur, by L. Morel (Paris, 1904).
MORELLET, ANDRÉ (1727–1819), French economist and
miscellaneous writer, was born at Lyons on the 7th of March
1727. He was one of the last survivors of the philosophes,
and in this character he figures in many memoirs, such as Mme
de Rémusat’s. He was educated by the Jesuits in his native
town, and at the Sorbonne; he then took holy orders, but his
designation of abbé was the chief thing clerical about him.
He had a ready and biting wit, and Voltaire called him “L’Abbé
Mord-les.” His work was chiefly occasional, and the most
notable parts of it were a smart pamphlet in answer to Charles
Palissot’s scurrilous play Les Philosophes (which procured him
a short sojourn in the Bastille for an alleged libel on Palissot’s
patroness, the princesse de Robeck), and a reply to Galiani’s
Commerce des blés (1770). Later, he made himself useful in
quasi-diplomatic communications with English statesmen,
and was pensioned, being, moreover, elected a member of the
Academy in 1785. A year before his death in Paris on the 12th
of January 1819 he brought out four volumes of Mélanges
de littérature et de philosophie du XVIIIᵉ siècle, composed chiefly
of selections from his former publications, and after his
death appeared his valuable Mémoires sur le XVIIIᵉ siècle et la Révolution (2 vols., 1821).
A bibliography of his numerous works is given in Quérard’s La France littéraire, vol. vi.; see also Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. i.
MORELLI, GIOVANNI (1816–1891), Italian patriot and art
critic, was born at Verona on the 16th of February 1816.
He was educated first at Bergamo, the home of his mother,
who had removed thither on the death of her husband; and
then at Aarau in Switzerland. At the age of eighteen he
commenced his university career at Munich, being debarred
as a Protestant from entering any Italian college, and became
the pupil of Ignatius Döllinger, the celebrated “professor of
anatomy and physiology. Natural philosophy and medicine
were the studies to which he specially devoted himself, but he
was also keenly interested in all scientific and literary pursuits.
At Munich, and later at Erlangen, Berlin and Paris, his brilliant
gifts and independence of thought and judgment attracted the
attention of the most distinguished men of the day. In Paris
he became intimate with Otto Mündler, and his intercourse
with that eminent art critic was not without its effect in determining
the direction of his future studies; and, during a summer
spent in Switzerland, he formed a friendship with Louis Agassiz,
whose teaching made a deep and lasting impression upon. him.
On his return to Italy in 1840 he became associated in Florence
with that band of patriots who were strenuously labouring for
the deliverance of their country from the oppressive Austrian
rule. He took an active part in the war of 1848, and was
subsequently chosen by the provisional Lombard government
to plead the cause of Italian unity before the German parliament
assembled at Frankfort; In 1860, in recognition of the
great services rendered to his country by Morelli, Victor
Emmanuel named him a citizen of the Sardinian kingdom, and
in the following year he was elected deputy for Bergamo to the
first free Italian parliament. He was a staunch supporter
of Cavour, and, though never a leading politician, exercised
a considerable influence over the most prominent statesmen of
the Right, who valued his sound judgment, integrity, moderation
and foresight. One of his first acts after his election was to draw
the attention of parliament to the urgent need of reform in the
administration of matters relating to the fine arts. In consequence
of his representations, a commission was appointed
with the object of bringing under government control all works
of art which could be considered public property. The commission,
of which Morelli was named president, began its work
in Umbria and the Marches, and he appointed as his secretary
G. B. Cavalcaselle, who was then engaged in collecting materials
for a work on Italian art; According to one who knew Morelli
well, much that Cavalcaselle then learned from his chief was
embodied in the well-known History of Painting, which was
published in 1864 in conjunction with Sir Joseph Crowe.
The immediate result of Morelli’s first labours in the Marches was the passing of the law, which bears his name, strictly prohibiting the sale of works of art from public and religious institutions. In 1873 he was named a senator of the kingdom of Italy, having voluntarily resigned his seat in the Lower House owing to the increasingly democratic tendencies of the Chamber. In Rome, the seat of the government since 1870, he spent several months of each year; but his settled home was Milan, whither he had removed from Bergamo in 1874. Here he published some of his researches into the history of Italian art. In order to be free to speak his mind unreservedly, he determined to adopt a pseudonym and to write in German. His first contributions, a series of articles on the Borghese Gallery, Were published in Lützow’s Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst between? the years 1874 and 1876. Posing as an art-loving Russian, who puts forth his opinions with the utmost diffidence, he adopted the pseudonym of Ivan Lermolieff—an anagram of his own name with a Russian termination—and described his essays as Ein kritischer Versuch, translated from the Russian by Johannes Schwarze, this time a Germanized form of Morelli.
