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Lot Essay
This large, highly refined and brilliantly colored Allegory of Winter is among the comparatively few easel paintings from the School of Fontainebleau that can be confidently ascribed to an identified artist. One of a set of four paintings depicting the Triumphs of the Seasons, it is a mature work dating from between 1570-1580 by Antoine Caron, and displays the festival atmosphere, stage-like architectural and landscape setting, and lively parade of small, elongated and nervously rendered mythological figures that characterize most of the artist’s surviving paintings.
Born in Beauvais in 1521, Antoine Caron (d. 1599) was an illustrator, tapestry designer, prolific draftsman, master glassmaker and painter. He began his career in his teens making frescos for local churches and designing cartoons for stained-glass windows, but received his real training at Fontainebleau, where he worked throughout the 1540s and ‘50s beside Niccolo dell’Abbate, executing frescos for the royal chateau under the direction of Primaticcio. From this apprenticeship, Caron developed an essentially Italianate style (with Flemish flourishes) characterized by the gaiety of his coloring, and he specialized in memorializing the major events and great celebrations of the day through sophisticated and sometimes obscure allegories. In 1561, he withdrew from the official équipe of artists at Fontainebleau and was appointed court painter to the French king and queen, Henry II and Catherine de’Medici, a role which also carried the duties of designing the court pageants and festivals. Caron organized the festivities for the marriage of Marguerite de Valois and the King of Navarre, the future Henry IV (1572); for Henry III’s entry into Paris and the receptions of the Polish ambassadors (1573); and the celebrations for the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse (1581). His paintings–all of which seem to date from the 1560s through the 1580s–increasingly reflect these public rejoicings, which were beloved by the queen.
Caron’s career as a painter was largely obscure until the mid-1930s, when through the art-historical detective work of Gustave Lebel, followed by Jean Ehrmann (who once owned the present picture), a small corpus of Caron’s paintings (fewer than 20) was established. Only a single painting by the artist–Massacres of the Triumvirate (Louvre)–is signed and dated (1566), but using it as a launching point, Lebel (and later Ehrmann) employed inventories and archival records, as well as a close study of Caron’s many drawings, illustrations and prints after his works to identify his paintings and establish their chronology. Although Caron is recorded as having made a number of portraits, none is convincingly ascribed to him, and of his surviving paintings all are multi-figural allegorical and historical subjects, court ceremonies or astrological scenes. His paintings invariably incorporate everything he learned from his many other occupations–illustrator, tapestry and print designer, and pageant master. As Chatelet and Thuillier observed, ‘his color has a theatrical brilliance and his architectural settings have the meticulous precision and emphatic perspective effects of maquettes for stage sets, while the clean-cut, rhythmic groupings of his tiny figures recalls the ballets then so much à la mode….Caron’s themes, too, are somewhat in the spirit of the state receptions and pageantry in which outstanding events of the time were transmuted into allegories, based on mythology or famous episodes of ancient history’ (loc. cit.).
The Triumph of Winter is among Antoine Caron’s finest paintings and a masterpiece of French Mannerism, displaying the artist’s abundance of talents and interests in a fantastical and witty painted pageant. In a frosty, snow-covered garden, a line of mythological deities process toward a bridge which transverses a freezing canal (or perhaps the pond of Fontainebleau) and leads to a small round temple inspired by the Tempietto of Bramante (1502). Four nude putti greet the two-faced Janus, who leads the procession. Looking to both the future and the past, Janus is the Roman god of beginnings for whom the first month of the year is named. Behind him follows Apollo playing his viol, then Mercury who holds a caduceus in one hand and a tortoise shell in the other, a symbol of music. Next is Minerva, goddess of wisdom and an embodiment of royalty; followed by three blacksmiths accompanying Vulcan, god of fire, who brings with him warmth; and a mysterious figure holding a smoking, ball-shaped vessel. Finally, the withered Goddess of Winter herself enters, seated regally on a golden chariot drawn by five herons, emblems of wisdom and rebirth. The zodiacal signs representing the winter months circle in the sky above her. The elegant, nimble figures of the gods reflect the elongated figural types of Niccolo dell’Abbate, but the imaginative addition of their footprints in the fresh snow–like the tiny figures on the distant right side of the composition who engage in a snowball fight–displays Caron’s distinctively light touch. Although encrusted with snow and ice, the picture is warmed by the palette of strong reds, saffron and rose in which Caron dresses his balletic gods.
The present Winter is likely from a group of four Triumphs of the Seasons, first documented in 1607. Two others paintings long associated with the set are extant: a Triumph of Summer (private collection; sold Christie’s New York, 30 May 2003, lot 33) and a Triumph of Spring (private collection; sold Christie’s New York, 30 May 2003, lot 37). A fragment from a replica of the Triumph of Spring is in the Musée de Nantes, suggesting that Caron (or his entourage) may have produced more than one series of the compositions. According to Ehrmann, a now-lost Triumph of Autumn might have been in a Paris collection prior to 1939, but no photograph of it is known (loc. cit.). In the recent catalogue raisonné of Caron’s works by Frédéric Hueber (loc. cit.), the author considers only the present Triumph of Winter to be an autograph original actually from Caron’s hand and believes the aforementioned Triumph of Summer and Triumph of Spring, as well as the Nantes fragment, to be fine old copies by anonymous painters, after lost originals by Caron. Indeed, the three Seasons do appear to be from different hands, with the present Triumph of Winter the finest and most accomplished of the pictures, and entirely in keeping with the handling and execution of Caron’s other undisputed paintings.
Hueber suggests that Caron’s Seasons may have been executed as a temporary room décor, perhaps for the château de Blois, and tentatively links the group to three receipts for payments from the royal treasury for paintings of unidentified subjects made to Caron in 1572. However, the earliest indisputable reference to Caron’s Seasons is in documents uncovered by Madeleine Jurgens at the Archives Nationales in Paris. Four paintings of the Seasons by Caron are mentioned as being in the collection of Alexandre Olivier, médailleur at the Monnaie, at the time of his death in 1607 when they were deeded to his widow, Marguerite de Héry. On 28 July 1612, they were acquired from her for the sum of 252 livres by her son as part of the final settlement of the estate. They are subsequently recorded in an inventory made in Olivier Aubin’s house ‘vis à vis de la galerie du Louvre’ at the time of his death in 1620, when they were presumably inherited by his two sons, Olivier fils and Alexandre.
The Triumph of the Seasons are later documented as the property of Simon de Vaulx, perfumer to Queen Marie de Medici, in his house on the Île de la Cité, ‘a la descente du Pont Notre-Dame, près la Madeleine’ (G. Wildenstein, loc. cit.). De Vaulx began to acquire works of art in about 1608 and assembled a sizable collection that is detailed in an inventory of 1651. The collection was dispersed shortly thereafter.
Born in Beauvais in 1521, Antoine Caron (d. 1599) was an illustrator, tapestry designer, prolific draftsman, master glassmaker and painter. He began his career in his teens making frescos for local churches and designing cartoons for stained-glass windows, but received his real training at Fontainebleau, where he worked throughout the 1540s and ‘50s beside Niccolo dell’Abbate, executing frescos for the royal chateau under the direction of Primaticcio. From this apprenticeship, Caron developed an essentially Italianate style (with Flemish flourishes) characterized by the gaiety of his coloring, and he specialized in memorializing the major events and great celebrations of the day through sophisticated and sometimes obscure allegories. In 1561, he withdrew from the official équipe of artists at Fontainebleau and was appointed court painter to the French king and queen, Henry II and Catherine de’Medici, a role which also carried the duties of designing the court pageants and festivals. Caron organized the festivities for the marriage of Marguerite de Valois and the King of Navarre, the future Henry IV (1572); for Henry III’s entry into Paris and the receptions of the Polish ambassadors (1573); and the celebrations for the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse (1581). His paintings–all of which seem to date from the 1560s through the 1580s–increasingly reflect these public rejoicings, which were beloved by the queen.
Caron’s career as a painter was largely obscure until the mid-1930s, when through the art-historical detective work of Gustave Lebel, followed by Jean Ehrmann (who once owned the present picture), a small corpus of Caron’s paintings (fewer than 20) was established. Only a single painting by the artist–Massacres of the Triumvirate (Louvre)–is signed and dated (1566), but using it as a launching point, Lebel (and later Ehrmann) employed inventories and archival records, as well as a close study of Caron’s many drawings, illustrations and prints after his works to identify his paintings and establish their chronology. Although Caron is recorded as having made a number of portraits, none is convincingly ascribed to him, and of his surviving paintings all are multi-figural allegorical and historical subjects, court ceremonies or astrological scenes. His paintings invariably incorporate everything he learned from his many other occupations–illustrator, tapestry and print designer, and pageant master. As Chatelet and Thuillier observed, ‘his color has a theatrical brilliance and his architectural settings have the meticulous precision and emphatic perspective effects of maquettes for stage sets, while the clean-cut, rhythmic groupings of his tiny figures recalls the ballets then so much à la mode….Caron’s themes, too, are somewhat in the spirit of the state receptions and pageantry in which outstanding events of the time were transmuted into allegories, based on mythology or famous episodes of ancient history’ (loc. cit.).
The Triumph of Winter is among Antoine Caron’s finest paintings and a masterpiece of French Mannerism, displaying the artist’s abundance of talents and interests in a fantastical and witty painted pageant. In a frosty, snow-covered garden, a line of mythological deities process toward a bridge which transverses a freezing canal (or perhaps the pond of Fontainebleau) and leads to a small round temple inspired by the Tempietto of Bramante (1502). Four nude putti greet the two-faced Janus, who leads the procession. Looking to both the future and the past, Janus is the Roman god of beginnings for whom the first month of the year is named. Behind him follows Apollo playing his viol, then Mercury who holds a caduceus in one hand and a tortoise shell in the other, a symbol of music. Next is Minerva, goddess of wisdom and an embodiment of royalty; followed by three blacksmiths accompanying Vulcan, god of fire, who brings with him warmth; and a mysterious figure holding a smoking, ball-shaped vessel. Finally, the withered Goddess of Winter herself enters, seated regally on a golden chariot drawn by five herons, emblems of wisdom and rebirth. The zodiacal signs representing the winter months circle in the sky above her. The elegant, nimble figures of the gods reflect the elongated figural types of Niccolo dell’Abbate, but the imaginative addition of their footprints in the fresh snow–like the tiny figures on the distant right side of the composition who engage in a snowball fight–displays Caron’s distinctively light touch. Although encrusted with snow and ice, the picture is warmed by the palette of strong reds, saffron and rose in which Caron dresses his balletic gods.
The present Winter is likely from a group of four Triumphs of the Seasons, first documented in 1607. Two others paintings long associated with the set are extant: a Triumph of Summer (private collection; sold Christie’s New York, 30 May 2003, lot 33) and a Triumph of Spring (private collection; sold Christie’s New York, 30 May 2003, lot 37). A fragment from a replica of the Triumph of Spring is in the Musée de Nantes, suggesting that Caron (or his entourage) may have produced more than one series of the compositions. According to Ehrmann, a now-lost Triumph of Autumn might have been in a Paris collection prior to 1939, but no photograph of it is known (loc. cit.). In the recent catalogue raisonné of Caron’s works by Frédéric Hueber (loc. cit.), the author considers only the present Triumph of Winter to be an autograph original actually from Caron’s hand and believes the aforementioned Triumph of Summer and Triumph of Spring, as well as the Nantes fragment, to be fine old copies by anonymous painters, after lost originals by Caron. Indeed, the three Seasons do appear to be from different hands, with the present Triumph of Winter the finest and most accomplished of the pictures, and entirely in keeping with the handling and execution of Caron’s other undisputed paintings.
Hueber suggests that Caron’s Seasons may have been executed as a temporary room décor, perhaps for the château de Blois, and tentatively links the group to three receipts for payments from the royal treasury for paintings of unidentified subjects made to Caron in 1572. However, the earliest indisputable reference to Caron’s Seasons is in documents uncovered by Madeleine Jurgens at the Archives Nationales in Paris. Four paintings of the Seasons by Caron are mentioned as being in the collection of Alexandre Olivier, médailleur at the Monnaie, at the time of his death in 1607 when they were deeded to his widow, Marguerite de Héry. On 28 July 1612, they were acquired from her for the sum of 252 livres by her son as part of the final settlement of the estate. They are subsequently recorded in an inventory made in Olivier Aubin’s house ‘vis à vis de la galerie du Louvre’ at the time of his death in 1620, when they were presumably inherited by his two sons, Olivier fils and Alexandre.
The Triumph of the Seasons are later documented as the property of Simon de Vaulx, perfumer to Queen Marie de Medici, in his house on the Île de la Cité, ‘a la descente du Pont Notre-Dame, près la Madeleine’ (G. Wildenstein, loc. cit.). De Vaulx began to acquire works of art in about 1608 and assembled a sizable collection that is detailed in an inventory of 1651. The collection was dispersed shortly thereafter.