Cocktails with a Curator™: Houdon's "Comtesse du Cayla"

In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator™,” Assistant Curator Giulio Dalvit examines the beguiling marble bust of “The Comtesse du Cayla” by Jean-Antoine Houdon. This beautifully intimate portrait showcases the artist’s virtuoso rendering of surfaces and volumes—it is almost impossible to imagine that the grapevine-girdled Comtesse began as a single block of marble. This week’s complementary cocktail, the Frosé, evokes summers in the south of France, where her family owned vast estates. Look for Houdon's "Comtesse du Cayla" on the fourth floor of Frick Madison, where it is installed next to canvases from Fragonard’s “Progress of Love” series and illuminated by natural light from one of the Breuer building’s trapezoidal windows. To view this marble bust in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/houdoncayla