Nursing Mother

This tender image of a mother and child shows Charpentier’s great skill at creating a sense of depth on a bronze plaque. The baby’s tiny feet seem to reach into our space as they drape across the horizontal plane of his mother’s knee. Charpentier achieves this effect by casting the infant’s toes in comparatively high relief. Charpentier was known for his portrait medals and for small plaques that were used in furniture design. This image, reproduced on a smaller scale, was used as decoration for a nursery armoire.