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Lot Essay
After having spent six years in Rome, from 1723 to 1729, as a young pensionnaire at the French Academy, Natoire returned to Rome in 1751 with the prestigious title of Director of the Academy. In 1756 he realized one of his major Italian commissions, the decoration of the ceiling of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi depicting the Apotheosis of Saint Louis (fig. 1; Cavaglia-Brunel, op. cit., P236, ill.).
Several drawings related to this important decoration survive; they are both studies of the whole composition and of individual details (ibid., nos. D510-D520). This large sheet is a study for the two soldiers, companions of Saint Louis at the time of his death in Tunis during the crusades, who appear at lower right in the painting. The highly finished quality of the figures and their poses very close to the final painted decoration, show that the drawing must have been part of the final stages of the invention of the elaborate scene.
In this drawing, Natoire used his favored blue paper in combination with black chalk, a technique that allowed him to draw the figures with precision and that lends to his sheets a distinctly delicate quality. As Susanna Cavaglia-Brunel pointed out, in Natoire’s œuvre even preparatory drawings, such as the present one, have the aesthetic appeal of independent works of art (S. Cavaglia-Brunel, ‘Des finalites du dessin chez Charles-Joseph Natoire, Revue de l’Art, CXLIII, 2004, no. 1, p. 35).
Fig. 1. Charles-Joseph Natoire, Apotheosis of Saint Louis. Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
Several drawings related to this important decoration survive; they are both studies of the whole composition and of individual details (ibid., nos. D510-D520). This large sheet is a study for the two soldiers, companions of Saint Louis at the time of his death in Tunis during the crusades, who appear at lower right in the painting. The highly finished quality of the figures and their poses very close to the final painted decoration, show that the drawing must have been part of the final stages of the invention of the elaborate scene.
In this drawing, Natoire used his favored blue paper in combination with black chalk, a technique that allowed him to draw the figures with precision and that lends to his sheets a distinctly delicate quality. As Susanna Cavaglia-Brunel pointed out, in Natoire’s œuvre even preparatory drawings, such as the present one, have the aesthetic appeal of independent works of art (S. Cavaglia-Brunel, ‘Des finalites du dessin chez Charles-Joseph Natoire, Revue de l’Art, CXLIII, 2004, no. 1, p. 35).
Fig. 1. Charles-Joseph Natoire, Apotheosis of Saint Louis. Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.