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Lot Essay
Carle Vanloo was the most influential painter of a family of Flemish artists. He was active mostly in Paris, where he was appointed First Painter to the King in 1762 and Director of the French Academy the following year. A versatile painter of portraits, history pictures, landscapes and exotic Turkish genre scenes, Vanloo dominated major commissions with few true rivals.
Vanloo was born in Nice in 1705 but raised from the age of seven in Turin by his older brother, Jean-Baptiste, then court painter to the Duke of Savoy, following the death of their father. By 1719 Carle was back in France, assisting in the restoration of the Galerie François Premier at Fontainebleau. In 1727 he traveled with Boucher to Rome, where he was influenced by the refined classicism of Raphael and Carlo Maratta. Seven years later he was agréé at the French Academy, where he was given the honor of selecting his own subject for his reception piece, following in the footsteps of Watteau in 1717. However, unlike Watteau, who submitted the first fête galante to the Academy, Vanloo presented a history picture, Apollo flaying Marsyas in 1735 (Paris, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts). From this point onward he never lacked commissions, losing his dominance only with the rise of Neo-classicism.
The present history painting depicts a scene from the eighth book of Virgil's Aeneid, in which Venus begs Vulcan to make weapons for her illegitimate son, Aeneas. The same subject had been assigned to Charles-Joseph Natoire in 1730 by the Academy as his official morceau de réception. Perhaps competitively, Boucher selected the very same subject two years later for the lawyer François Derbais's salle des billards (Louvre, Paris; fig. 1). Boucher's version, served as a prototype for the present composition.
Vanloo was born in Nice in 1705 but raised from the age of seven in Turin by his older brother, Jean-Baptiste, then court painter to the Duke of Savoy, following the death of their father. By 1719 Carle was back in France, assisting in the restoration of the Galerie François Premier at Fontainebleau. In 1727 he traveled with Boucher to Rome, where he was influenced by the refined classicism of Raphael and Carlo Maratta. Seven years later he was agréé at the French Academy, where he was given the honor of selecting his own subject for his reception piece, following in the footsteps of Watteau in 1717. However, unlike Watteau, who submitted the first fête galante to the Academy, Vanloo presented a history picture, Apollo flaying Marsyas in 1735 (Paris, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts). From this point onward he never lacked commissions, losing his dominance only with the rise of Neo-classicism.
The present history painting depicts a scene from the eighth book of Virgil's Aeneid, in which Venus begs Vulcan to make weapons for her illegitimate son, Aeneas. The same subject had been assigned to Charles-Joseph Natoire in 1730 by the Academy as his official morceau de réception. Perhaps competitively, Boucher selected the very same subject two years later for the lawyer François Derbais's salle des billards (Louvre, Paris; fig. 1). Boucher's version, served as a prototype for the present composition.