The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature. . . . Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect.
—Lord Macaulay, Machiavelli (1828)
One of the more unusual items in the Bibliothèque Nationale’s manuscript collection is an autograph album containing a number of songs, tiny piano pieces, or musical themes, all dedicated to the album’s owner.
Its first few pages have autographs from several famous composers, Rossini, Berlioz, and Donizetti among them. The remaining ninety-some items were contributed by violinists like Paganini and Vieuxtemps, pianists like Chopin and Liszt, and singers like Pauline Viardot and Maria Malibran. While some of the dedications are friendly and personal, others are more formal, suggesting that their authors took a little care with what they wrote. Given the formidable personality of their recipient, this was perhaps unsurprising. “Make no mistake,” warned the dandy Roger de Beauvoir, “this is a man not to be treated lightly.”
The owner of the album, Jean-Pierre Dantan, better known as Dantan jeune (“the younger”), invented the statuette charge—the “caricature sculpture”—and created dozens and dozens of them parodying some of the most famous figures of the day. One could buy them in a few galleries, but it was much more fun to shop in Dantan’s sunlit studio-shop in the Cité d’Orléans, right by Chopin’s apartment, where they and his more serious sculptures were displayed in macabre fashion under stuffed crocodiles, snakes, predatory birds, and
