拍品專文
Frontier won the Prix de Rome in 1728 but only arrived at the Académie de France in Rome on 20 November 1733. He stayed six years. Frontier was elected to the Académie in Paris in 1745 as history painter. A group of thirty drawings by Frontier are at Düsseldorf, acquired by Lambert Krahe in Rome in the 18th Century. Another drawing, similar in handling to this one, was with Prouté in 1981, Giambattista, no. 31, illustrated. Its unusual subject, Theseus and the Bull of Marathon, is the same as that of a picture by Carle van Loo painted in Turin in 1732-4, M.-C. Sahut, Carle van Loo, exhib. cat., Musée Chéret, Nice and elsewhere, no. 32, illustrated. Frontier, who was then in Rome, had probably been inspired by that picture. Moreover, the source of the present drawing might be van Loo's early picture Augustus and the Barbarian Princes of similar composition: the barbarian prince seated on a pedestal before Augustus on the right of the drawing can be seen, lightly sketched in on the pedestal before the kneeling figure.
The drawing, however, bears an old attribution to Subleyras on the mount which the technique of the sheet makes most plausible. Cavaceppi was a close friend of Subleyras's family in Rome and it seems likely that the traditional attribution was thus passed to Pacetti. There is, however, no known related painting by Subleyras.
The drawing, however, bears an old attribution to Subleyras on the mount which the technique of the sheet makes most plausible. Cavaceppi was a close friend of Subleyras's family in Rome and it seems likely that the traditional attribution was thus passed to Pacetti. There is, however, no known related painting by Subleyras.