TROPHIME BIGOT*(1579-1650) or THE MASTER OF THE CANDLE* (c.1600-c.1650)

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

Details

TROPHIME BIGOT*(1579-1650) or THE MASTER OF THE CANDLE* (c.1600-c.1650)

The Liberation of Saint Peter

oil on canvas
39½ x 53½in. (100.3 x 135.9cm.)

Provenance

with Victor Spark, New York
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, Dec. 7, 1988, lot 131

Literature

B. Nicolson, The 'Candlelight Master', A Follower of Honthorst in Rome, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1960, p. 138, illustrated p. 10
B. Nicolson, Un Caravaggiste Aixois-Le Maître à la Chandelle, Art de France, 1964, illustrated p. 31
B. Nicolson, The Rehabilitation of Trophime Bigot, Art and Literature, 1965, no. 10, cat. no. 24
Catalogue of the exhibition, I Caravaggeschi Francesi, Villa Medici, Rome and Grand Palais, Paris, 1973-74, p. 239
B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, 1979, p. 22 B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, ed. L. Vertova, 1979, I, p. 62, as Bigot

Exhibited

Nashville, Tennessee, Tennessee Fine Arts Center, 1961
Montreal, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Images of the Saints, March-April 1965
New York, Finch College Museum of Art, Neapolitan Masters of the 17th and 18th Century, 1974, no. 57

Lot Essay

J. Boyer in The one and only Trophime Bigot, Burlington Magazine, CXXX, May 1988, pp. 355-57, has recently pointed out that there was only one Bigot, rather than two -- a father and son -- as previously thought. Boyer believes that Trophime Bigot executed at least some of the artificially lit scenes formerly given to The Master of the Candle as well as a group of religious paintings executed in Provence between 1634 and 1650. The distinction between the works of Bigot and The Master of the Candle is still not entirely clear and thus one cannot yet firmly attribute the painting to one artist or the other