Lot Essay
In 1761, after a period spent in Rome, Fragonard returned to Paris in the company of the Abbé de Saint-Non, a connoisseur, writer and amateur printmaker. En route, Fragonard drew copies of three hundred Old Master paintings which they had seen, probably because the Abbé hoped to write a guide to the cities they had visited, which could then be illustrated with Fragonard's copies (Rosenberg, loc. cit., 1987-8). Although this ambition never came to fruition, Fragonard executed etchings after sixteen of his drawings, presumably those which he felt were most accomplished and commercial. The original of this very fine counterproof was one of the selected drawings; now lost, its appearance is recorded by this counterproof, by the etching itself and by an aquatint copy by the Abbé, all of which reverse the composition of the original drawing (Rosenberg, loc. cit.). Richly worked up by the artist, to the stage where it is as carefully finished as any original drawing, this counterproof shows Fragonard trying to capture the monumentality and the fall of light in the original Vision of St Jerome by Johann Liss. Considered to be Liss's masterpiece, this painting still hangs where Fragonard and the Abbé saw it, in S. Nicolò da Tolentino, Venice (Rosenberg, loc. cit.).