Architectural capriccio with figures and a temple

Pierre-Antoine Patel was the son of Pierre Patel (1605-1676), also known as 'le Claude Lorrain de la France' (P.-J. Mariette, Abecedario de Pierre-Jean Mariette et autres notes inédites, IV, Paris, 1858, p. 88). Influenced by his father, Pierre-Antoine specialised in the depiction of landscapes with ancient ruins and figures. From the 1680s, he seems to have focused his artistic production on making landscapes enlivened with mythological figures or religious subjects in gouache on vellum (N. Coural, Les Patel, paysagistes du XVIIe siècle, Paris, 2001, pp. 125-127). This large-scale architectural capriccio is typical of these gouaches: an Arcadian landscape with Greco-Roman ruins - the remains of a temple, two obelisks and a tholos - is populated by several groups of figures. The harmonious palette of colours is typical of his work, as illustrated by another gouache in the Musée du Louvre (inv. RF 1958; see Coural, op. cit., no. PAP 159, ill.).
The attribution was confirmed by Nathalie Coural at the time of the work's sale in 2011.