Saint James the Greater

The present lot is an unfinished reduction of the large-scale painting now in the Louvre, Paris. The Louvre picture formed part of the May commissions of 1661. These important commissions began after the end of the Hundred Years' War, when the two masters of the brotherhood of Saints Anne and Marcel, and the Goldsmiths' Guild of Paris, presented the chapter of Notre-Dame in Paris with an annual gift on May Day, the month of Mary, at midnight. From 1630, this gift came in the form of a large painting, which was placed in the choir of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. A pen and ink drawing relating to the Louvre picture and to the present lot is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes (Inv. 94-2-8).