Voltaire

Jean-Antoine Houdon

National Gallery of Art

A white marble sculpture shows the head and upper chest of an elderly, gaunt, bald, smiling man. In this photograph, the man’s face is angled to our right, and he looks off in that direction with hooded eyes under bushy brows. His forehead, eyes, and mouth are lined with wrinkles. He has a bulbous, slightly hooked nose and high cheekbones. He smiles with his thin lips together. There is a fringe of hair over the ear we can see, and his head is otherwise smooth. The tendons on his neck stand out. The narrow base of the sculpture curves in a U down past his collarbones, and is supported on a charcoal-gray, polished marble base. The sculpture casts a light shadow against a pale gray background to our left in this photograph.