Chapter 21　A Lion, a Saint, and an Emperor

Do you like to go to the zoo?Almost everybody likes to look at animals, play with animals, or draw animals. A man named Barye liked to make statues of animals.

Barye lived in Paris. He worked in a jewelry shop and was a goldsmith, as were so many of the Renaissance sculptors of Florence.But Barye lived much later than the Renaissance.He lived in the 1800s.

Barye loved to go to the zoo in Paris. He used to take paper and crayons to the zoo and draw pictures of the animals.Then he would go home and make little statues of the animals he had drawn.When he was at work in the jewelry shop, he often made tiny gold animals for watch chains and necklaces and bronze animals to go on clocks.In this way Barye practiced until he became the best animal sculptor of his time in the world.Americans especially liked his lions and tigers.On the street corners of American towns, men used to sell plaster casts of Barye's Walking Lion.

Many of Barye's bronzes show action and cruelty. He seemed to like making statues depicting the survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom, such as a tiger eating an alligator or a jaguar eating a rabbit.

Many of Barye's bronze animals are much too small for monuments, but people still call his work monumental sculpture. This means that Barye modeled his statues in the same way large monuments that you see in parks were modeled.They are not filled with