Lot Essay
We are grateful to Madame Paola Pacht Bassani for confirming the attribution of this hitherto untraced work by Vignon, on the basis of a transparency. The composition was previously known only through Rousselet's engraving - in the same sense as the present lot - and two copies on canvas, one which was in a sale at Versailles on 25 May 1966, lot 28, measuring 97 x 143cm., and another in the church of Notre-Dame-aux-Neiges, Aurillac, measuring 115 x 219cm. (Pacht Bassani, op. cit., pp. 342-3, nos. 264G, 264Ca and 264Cb). Madame Pacht Bassani believes that the present lot may be the prototype for the engraving.
In her catalogue raisonné she dates the composition to before 1640. An inventory of the artist of 1643 lists two pictures which correspond closely with the present lot: 'Item une grande planche où est la Vierge qui faict de la boulie, gravée par Mounsiur Rousselet' and '... Un de la boulie à Nostre Seigneur, avec plusieurs autres figures aussi fait de la main dudit sieur Vignon'.
In her catalogue raisonné she dates the composition to before 1640. An inventory of the artist of 1643 lists two pictures which correspond closely with the present lot: 'Item une grande planche où est la Vierge qui faict de la boulie, gravée par Mounsiur Rousselet' and '... Un de la boulie à Nostre Seigneur, avec plusieurs autres figures aussi fait de la main dudit sieur Vignon'.