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Lot Essay
This exquisite panel, which sheltered for many years under an attribution to Raphael or his workshop, has only recently been recognized as the work of Philippe de Champaigne, and is published here for the first time. It is both a vibrant tribute by one great artist to another, and an example of the fundamental influence of the Master of Urbino on the classical revival in French painting, known as 'Parisian Atticism,' that dominated the middle years of the seventeenth century.
The model for Champaigne's painting was a drawing by Raphael (or his workshop) depicting the Virgin and Child with St. Elizabeth and St. John (who playfully hands a small bird to the Christ Child), known as the Holy Family with a Sparrow. Champaigne--who never made the trip to Italy--studied the drawing when it was in the celebrated collection of the Parisian banker Everhard Jabach (1618-1685), as Pierre-Jean Mariette confirmed in his Notes manuscrites (p. 141); Raphael's drawing would be one of the more than 2000 sheets purchased from Jabach for the collection of Louis XIV in 1671, and is today in the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre (inv. 3949; fig. 1). Although Paul Joannides tentatively proposes a lost painting by Raphael based on the drawing (see P. Joannides, The Drawings of Raphael, with a Complete Catalogue, Berkeley, 1983, under no. 152), none is known or recorded, and it is possible that Raphael never developed the sheet into a finished composition. In any event, Champaigne's painting--while remaining entirely faithful to the disposition of Raphael's figural group--imaginatively completes the composition, much of which is barely suggested in the drawing's summary strokes of brush and wash. Champaigne integrates the Holy Family into a fully developed landscape setting that is entirely original, and among the most beautiful of his career. Indeed, the present painting is not a copy in the usual sense of the word; rather, it is a creative copy, in which Champaigne translated and interpreted Raphael's design into the finished painting that the Renaissance master himself had never undertaken.
In an address he would deliver on 2 March 1669 to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (of which he was a professor and founding member), Champaigne analyzed Raphael's beloved Petite Sainte Famille (in the French royal collection from 1663; today in the Louvre and generally given to Giulio Romano, inv. 605), and did not hesitate to point out its faults, as he perceived them, in its observation of light, perspective and proportion. However, he praised as unequalled the beauty and nobility of the figures' attitudes and expressions, noting that Raphael--'this wise and judicious painter'--has 'ever surpassed himself in the spiritual dimension of his art, which seems able to speak through his figures and make them say whatever the subject may require'.
In the present painting, Champaigne goes to great lengths to capture a comparable spiritual truth, rendering the deep humanity of the characters in their gentle gestures and tenderly observed expressions. The clarity of the painting, its precise drawing, enameled finish and high-keyed palette (characterized by the cool, ethereal blue that was a hallmark of the artist's work) is typical of Champaigne's decorative canvases commissioned for the apartments of Anne of Austria in the Benedictine convent of Val-de-Grâce that were fitted out for the young queen during her Regency. In particular, the four large landscapes with episodes from the Lives of the Saints made in 1656 show striking similarities in both the figures and landscapes settings with the handling of the Holy Family with a Sparrow, as has been noted by both Frédérique Lanoë (in correspondence, 11 March 2012) and Paul Lang (in correspondence, 30 March 2012). Lang proposes a dating for the present work of around 1660, the year also generally posited for one of Champaigne's most exquisite landscapes, the great Christ Healing the Blind, in the Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, in which the foliage and clear, vivid blue palette reflect the influence of his teacher, Antwerp-born Jacques Fouquier (c.1590-1659), and other Flemish painters such as Paul Brill and Joos de Momper, whose works Champaigne studied during his early training in Brussels. As Lang observes, it was in the 1660s that Raphael's influence on Philippe de Champaigne was at its peak, as is evidenced by the altarpiece depicting Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, which was painted in 1663-1664 for the chapterhouse of the Cathedral of Soissons (attributed by some scholars to Philippe's nephew, Jean Baptiste de Champaigne), and derives closely from Raphael's famous tapestry cartoon of the same subject (1515; London, Victoria & Albert Museum).
The present painting is recorded in the inventory of Champaigne's estate drawn up on 17 August 1674, shortly after the artist's death, by the huissier priseur, Maître Bost, who was advised by Nicolas de Plattemontagne (1631-1706), Champaigne's pupil and assistant in the decorative projects at Val-de-Grâce: 'no. 22. Item, une coppie d'une petite Vierge où saint Jean présente un oyseau à Nostre Seigneur, après Raphael' and given the comparatively large valuation of 60 livres (see Guiffrey, 1892, op. cit.). It was engraved, in reverse, by Gilles Rousselet (1610-1686)(fig. 2), who, like Champaigne, was a prominent member of the fledgling Academy and made prints after paintings and drawings by Stella, Bourdon, Vignon, La Hyre and more than 90 plates after works by his friend Charles Le Brun. Rousselet's print reproduces the painting down to the smallest detail, including the gilded haloes of Mary and Elizabeth (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale; see Vasselin, 1984, op.cit.). A rare impression of another print, almost identical in size, by Champaigne's pupil, Jean Alix (b.1615), is in The British Museum; according to Mariette (who records second-hand an account from the painter Vleughels), Alix's print reproduces not Champaigne's painting, but a copy of the composition by the obscure painter Henry Bommar (he was brother-in-law of Nicolas de Plattemontagne), which was based on 'un dessin de M. Champaigne, copié d'après le dessin original de Rafael, qui estoit chez M. Jabach' ('a drawing by M. Champaigne, copied after an original drawing by Raphael that belonged at the time to M. Jabach'). No painting by the little-known Bommar has come down to us, and no drawing of the composition by Champaigne is known today, but Vleughel's assertion that the print reproduces a drawing by Champaigne rather than the present painting is possible, as it does not include the haloes that are prominent in both the painting and Rousselet's engraving of it.
Our thanks to Frédérique Lanoë for confirming the attribution of the painting to Philippe de Champaigne based on the examination of photographs, and to Mme. Lanoë and Mr. Paul Lang for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.
The model for Champaigne's painting was a drawing by Raphael (or his workshop) depicting the Virgin and Child with St. Elizabeth and St. John (who playfully hands a small bird to the Christ Child), known as the Holy Family with a Sparrow. Champaigne--who never made the trip to Italy--studied the drawing when it was in the celebrated collection of the Parisian banker Everhard Jabach (1618-1685), as Pierre-Jean Mariette confirmed in his Notes manuscrites (p. 141); Raphael's drawing would be one of the more than 2000 sheets purchased from Jabach for the collection of Louis XIV in 1671, and is today in the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre (inv. 3949; fig. 1). Although Paul Joannides tentatively proposes a lost painting by Raphael based on the drawing (see P. Joannides, The Drawings of Raphael, with a Complete Catalogue, Berkeley, 1983, under no. 152), none is known or recorded, and it is possible that Raphael never developed the sheet into a finished composition. In any event, Champaigne's painting--while remaining entirely faithful to the disposition of Raphael's figural group--imaginatively completes the composition, much of which is barely suggested in the drawing's summary strokes of brush and wash. Champaigne integrates the Holy Family into a fully developed landscape setting that is entirely original, and among the most beautiful of his career. Indeed, the present painting is not a copy in the usual sense of the word; rather, it is a creative copy, in which Champaigne translated and interpreted Raphael's design into the finished painting that the Renaissance master himself had never undertaken.
In an address he would deliver on 2 March 1669 to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (of which he was a professor and founding member), Champaigne analyzed Raphael's beloved Petite Sainte Famille (in the French royal collection from 1663; today in the Louvre and generally given to Giulio Romano, inv. 605), and did not hesitate to point out its faults, as he perceived them, in its observation of light, perspective and proportion. However, he praised as unequalled the beauty and nobility of the figures' attitudes and expressions, noting that Raphael--'this wise and judicious painter'--has 'ever surpassed himself in the spiritual dimension of his art, which seems able to speak through his figures and make them say whatever the subject may require'.
In the present painting, Champaigne goes to great lengths to capture a comparable spiritual truth, rendering the deep humanity of the characters in their gentle gestures and tenderly observed expressions. The clarity of the painting, its precise drawing, enameled finish and high-keyed palette (characterized by the cool, ethereal blue that was a hallmark of the artist's work) is typical of Champaigne's decorative canvases commissioned for the apartments of Anne of Austria in the Benedictine convent of Val-de-Grâce that were fitted out for the young queen during her Regency. In particular, the four large landscapes with episodes from the Lives of the Saints made in 1656 show striking similarities in both the figures and landscapes settings with the handling of the Holy Family with a Sparrow, as has been noted by both Frédérique Lanoë (in correspondence, 11 March 2012) and Paul Lang (in correspondence, 30 March 2012). Lang proposes a dating for the present work of around 1660, the year also generally posited for one of Champaigne's most exquisite landscapes, the great Christ Healing the Blind, in the Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, in which the foliage and clear, vivid blue palette reflect the influence of his teacher, Antwerp-born Jacques Fouquier (c.1590-1659), and other Flemish painters such as Paul Brill and Joos de Momper, whose works Champaigne studied during his early training in Brussels. As Lang observes, it was in the 1660s that Raphael's influence on Philippe de Champaigne was at its peak, as is evidenced by the altarpiece depicting Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, which was painted in 1663-1664 for the chapterhouse of the Cathedral of Soissons (attributed by some scholars to Philippe's nephew, Jean Baptiste de Champaigne), and derives closely from Raphael's famous tapestry cartoon of the same subject (1515; London, Victoria & Albert Museum).
The present painting is recorded in the inventory of Champaigne's estate drawn up on 17 August 1674, shortly after the artist's death, by the huissier priseur, Maître Bost, who was advised by Nicolas de Plattemontagne (1631-1706), Champaigne's pupil and assistant in the decorative projects at Val-de-Grâce: 'no. 22. Item, une coppie d'une petite Vierge où saint Jean présente un oyseau à Nostre Seigneur, après Raphael' and given the comparatively large valuation of 60 livres (see Guiffrey, 1892, op. cit.). It was engraved, in reverse, by Gilles Rousselet (1610-1686)(fig. 2), who, like Champaigne, was a prominent member of the fledgling Academy and made prints after paintings and drawings by Stella, Bourdon, Vignon, La Hyre and more than 90 plates after works by his friend Charles Le Brun. Rousselet's print reproduces the painting down to the smallest detail, including the gilded haloes of Mary and Elizabeth (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale; see Vasselin, 1984, op.cit.). A rare impression of another print, almost identical in size, by Champaigne's pupil, Jean Alix (b.1615), is in The British Museum; according to Mariette (who records second-hand an account from the painter Vleughels), Alix's print reproduces not Champaigne's painting, but a copy of the composition by the obscure painter Henry Bommar (he was brother-in-law of Nicolas de Plattemontagne), which was based on 'un dessin de M. Champaigne, copié d'après le dessin original de Rafael, qui estoit chez M. Jabach' ('a drawing by M. Champaigne, copied after an original drawing by Raphael that belonged at the time to M. Jabach'). No painting by the little-known Bommar has come down to us, and no drawing of the composition by Champaigne is known today, but Vleughel's assertion that the print reproduces a drawing by Champaigne rather than the present painting is possible, as it does not include the haloes that are prominent in both the painting and Rousselet's engraving of it.
Our thanks to Frédérique Lanoë for confirming the attribution of the painting to Philippe de Champaigne based on the examination of photographs, and to Mme. Lanoë and Mr. Paul Lang for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.