Ernest Christophe

Ernest Louis Aquilas Christophe (15 January 1827 – 14 January 1892) was a French sculptor, a student of François Rude and a friend of Charles Baudelaire. Rude assigned him to help with the bronze recumbent effigy to Éléonore-Louis Godefroi Cavaignac, a French politician. The funerary monument is signed Rude et Christophe, son jeune élève (Rude and Christophe, his young pupil). His Le Masque (the Mask) sculpture won Christophe third place in the Paris Salon in 1876 and two of his sculptures, La Fatalité (Fatality) and Le Baiser suprême (The supreme kiss) were acquired by the Musée du Luxembourg. He is buried in the Batignolles Cemetery. The sculpture inspired Christophe's friend Charles Baudelaire to write his poem Le Masque (the Mask). The sculptor renamed his statue "The Mask" with a nod to Baudelaire's ekphrastic poem. The work depicts a semi-nude woman whose smiling face is really a mask that hides "a face of sorrow".

La Fatalité, a statue executed by Christophe in 1885, inspired another French poet Leconte de Lisle's poem of the same title.

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