Lot Essay
The present drawing is a study for the figure of the angel looking down, his arms folded, on the left of God the Father, in the upper part of The Baptism of Christ of 1690, commissioned by the Abbé d'Aligre for the chapel of Saint Jean Baptiste in the Abbey of Saint Riquier in the departement of Somme. Son and grandson of chancellors, the Abbé d'Aligre renovated the church and commissioned several other pictures from Claude-Guy Hallé, Antoine Paillet and Jean Jouvenet. To spur enthusiasm, the abbé offered a prize of 200 livres for the best picture: a contest in which Coypel came second only to Jouvenet.
The composition dates from the period when Coypel, fully trained as an official painter, saw the work at Versailles brought to a halt due to lack of funds. The artist had then to rely on patrons other than the King while he was asked to take a position in the débat between the defenders of Rubens and those of Poussin - an argument concerning whether colour or design mattered most in art. The present drawing offered Coypel's answers to these questions. The precisely delineated figure, drawn in the best Le Brun manner is, however, heightened with pink pastel, a predominant colour in the picture. If the general composition of the altarpiece is conventional, its colour scheme is not and represents a confirmation of Coypel's agreement with the 'Rubenist' theory.
Although no drawing for the present composition is known, an undescribed study for the present composition was among the drawings offered at the sale of Charles-Antoine Coypel's studio in 1753, lot 273, withdrawn, which may be the same one mentioned in the inventory of Marie-Catherine Botet, the daughter-in-law of Coypel, N. Garnier, Antoine Coypel, Paris, 1989, nos. 202-3.
The composition dates from the period when Coypel, fully trained as an official painter, saw the work at Versailles brought to a halt due to lack of funds. The artist had then to rely on patrons other than the King while he was asked to take a position in the débat between the defenders of Rubens and those of Poussin - an argument concerning whether colour or design mattered most in art. The present drawing offered Coypel's answers to these questions. The precisely delineated figure, drawn in the best Le Brun manner is, however, heightened with pink pastel, a predominant colour in the picture. If the general composition of the altarpiece is conventional, its colour scheme is not and represents a confirmation of Coypel's agreement with the 'Rubenist' theory.
Although no drawing for the present composition is known, an undescribed study for the present composition was among the drawings offered at the sale of Charles-Antoine Coypel's studio in 1753, lot 273, withdrawn, which may be the same one mentioned in the inventory of Marie-Catherine Botet, the daughter-in-law of Coypel, N. Garnier, Antoine Coypel, Paris, 1989, nos. 202-3.