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拍品專文
The tale of Pan's assault on the nymph Syrinx is recounted by several classical authors, most memorably by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (I: 698-712). The son of Mercury and the nymph Dryope, Pan was born half man and half goat, and his bestial features were mocked by the nymphs who resisted his advances. He fell in love with Syrinx, one of Diana's chaste attendants, and pursued her one day as she returned from the hunt. Stopped by the water's edge and unable to run farther, Syrinx begged her father, the river god Ladon, to rescue her, and she was miraculously transformed into a marsh reed at the very instant of Pan's touch. The sweet sound made by the wind whistling through the reeds that Pan now forelornly embraced so charmed the god that he joined them together to make an instrument of seven pipes, the panpipes which to this day bear his name.
De Troy's splendidly energetic and virile depiction of this mythic tale of unrequited love ranks among his finest productions, but it represents only one of at least six occasions when he took up the subject, invariably to great effect. Each time he painted the popular story he treated it differently and usually in original compositions; his surviving or recorded depictions of Pan and Syrinx include: a painting signed and dated '1720' in the Cleveland Museum of Art (see Bailey, op. cit., p. 216, fig. 1); a painting that is neither signed nor dated but probably dates from circa 1722-4, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (ibid., no. 17); the present picture from the Lagerfeld collection which is signed and dated '1733'; a lost work painted in 1741 for Christian VI of Denmark that was destroyed in a fire at Christiansborg Palace in 1794; a variant replica of the latter, installed in the garden of Frederiksdal Slot; and a similar composition, signed and dated '1751', formerly in the collection of Paul Wallraf, London.
In the Lagerfeld Pan and Syrinx, De Troy unites his three protagonists in a powerfully compact composition that emphasizes their conflicting desires and strong emotions: Pan lunges desperately to embrace the nymph before she escapes; a terrified Syrinx throws herself into her father's open arms; Ladon embraces his daughter but knows that in so doing he will lose her forever, and he gazes plaintively on the bestial but despairing god. Altogether, it is one of the artist's most sonorous creations, made all the more beautiful by a verdant and poetic woodland setting reminiscent of the Landscape with Duck Hunters, a painting by De Troy from 1730 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Although De Troy rarely drew, he made a superb pastel study for the head of Syrinx (sold, Christie's New York, 10 January 1990, lot 119) that was exhibited at Galerie Patrick Perrin in 1990 (De Callot à Tiepolo, no. 8) and is now in a private collection (fig. 1).
The Lagerfeld Pan and Syrinx was recorded in the sale of the artist's estate held by his heirs in Paris on 2-5 May 1764 (lot 107), a dozen years after his death. It would be surprising that such a distinguished painting remained with its author until his death, if we did not know from his contemporary biographer, Dezallier d'Argenville, that many dozens of De Troy's best paintings failed to find buyers due to the exorbitant prices he charged for the paintings he made for the private market; so great a problem was this for the artist in the 1730s, that it induced him to leave Paris and take up the post of Director of the French Academy in Rome, where he served from 1738 until his death in 1752.
The present painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Jean-François de Troy's paintings being prepared by Christophe Léribault.
De Troy's splendidly energetic and virile depiction of this mythic tale of unrequited love ranks among his finest productions, but it represents only one of at least six occasions when he took up the subject, invariably to great effect. Each time he painted the popular story he treated it differently and usually in original compositions; his surviving or recorded depictions of Pan and Syrinx include: a painting signed and dated '1720' in the Cleveland Museum of Art (see Bailey, op. cit., p. 216, fig. 1); a painting that is neither signed nor dated but probably dates from circa 1722-4, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (ibid., no. 17); the present picture from the Lagerfeld collection which is signed and dated '1733'; a lost work painted in 1741 for Christian VI of Denmark that was destroyed in a fire at Christiansborg Palace in 1794; a variant replica of the latter, installed in the garden of Frederiksdal Slot; and a similar composition, signed and dated '1751', formerly in the collection of Paul Wallraf, London.
In the Lagerfeld Pan and Syrinx, De Troy unites his three protagonists in a powerfully compact composition that emphasizes their conflicting desires and strong emotions: Pan lunges desperately to embrace the nymph before she escapes; a terrified Syrinx throws herself into her father's open arms; Ladon embraces his daughter but knows that in so doing he will lose her forever, and he gazes plaintively on the bestial but despairing god. Altogether, it is one of the artist's most sonorous creations, made all the more beautiful by a verdant and poetic woodland setting reminiscent of the Landscape with Duck Hunters, a painting by De Troy from 1730 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Although De Troy rarely drew, he made a superb pastel study for the head of Syrinx (sold, Christie's New York, 10 January 1990, lot 119) that was exhibited at Galerie Patrick Perrin in 1990 (De Callot à Tiepolo, no. 8) and is now in a private collection (fig. 1).
The Lagerfeld Pan and Syrinx was recorded in the sale of the artist's estate held by his heirs in Paris on 2-5 May 1764 (lot 107), a dozen years after his death. It would be surprising that such a distinguished painting remained with its author until his death, if we did not know from his contemporary biographer, Dezallier d'Argenville, that many dozens of De Troy's best paintings failed to find buyers due to the exorbitant prices he charged for the paintings he made for the private market; so great a problem was this for the artist in the 1730s, that it induced him to leave Paris and take up the post of Director of the French Academy in Rome, where he served from 1738 until his death in 1752.
The present painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Jean-François de Troy's paintings being prepared by Christophe Léribault.