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Lot Essay
Desprez trained as draftsman and engraver in the Paris studio of Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790) in the 1750s before entering the workshop of the architect Jacques-François Blondel (1705-1774). Among his first works were illustrations for architectural books and textbooks. He later left France to study in Italy, arriving in Rome in 1777 at the age of thirty-four, with a solid training as a draftsman, engraver and architect. A few months after his arrival, Desprez was hired by the Abbé de Saint-Non to produce illustrations for the latter’s Voyage Picturesque, a description of the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, published between 1781 and 1786. In December 1777, Desprez left Rome for the South of Italy. Through his friend and mentor Charles de Wailly, Desprez learned to design stage sets for the theater. His architectural reconstructions are often populated by a crowd of characters animating the space, for example his Street in Pompei (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. REC 74 recto). Returning to Rome almost a year later, in 1778, having finished working for Saint-Non, Deprez obtained from the Comte d’Angivillier, superintendent of the French King’s buildings, an extension of his Roman scholarship of an additional year. Putting aside his studies of architecture, the main reason for his residence in Rome, Desprez became interested in different subjects such as peasant scenes and religious ceremonies, exploiting his talent for theatrical effects. The arrival in Rome of the Swedish King Gustav III at the end of 1783 marked a decisive turning point in Desprez’s career: the artist was soon offered a two-year contract by the King to produce stage designs for the Royal Theater in Stockholm.
The setting chosen by Desprez for this large sheet is the choir of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, clearly identifiable by the Baroque architecture and by the main high altar, adorned with Francesco Bassano’s Assumption of the Virgin. In the drawing an important religious ceremony is depicted, the ordination of a bishop, in the presence of a large number of people. On the right, in front of the altar, the enthroned Pope Pius VI, surrounded by a group of ecclesiastics, is blessing a prelate kneeling in front of him. Other members of the church are busy near two tables on which are displayed the paraphernalia necessary for the liturgy: a chalice, an ewer, kegs and patens. On the left, a row of candelabras separates the officiants from the faithful in the nave, while two stands on the side of the main altar are filled with richly dressed characters watching the ceremony. The figure dressed in blue, at the center of the choir loft, can probably be identified as King Gustav III of Sweden. With extraordinary talent Desprez transcribed the atmosphere of the event in the drawing, highlighting the tension between the imposing architecture and the occasion’s solemnity. He drew several religious ceremonies in Rome, further testifying to his interest in this type of subject. While his compositions are rendered with exceptional accuracy, we do not know if the artist was an eyewitness to those ceremonies. A partially colored drawing of a similar size, recently on the art market (Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 29 May 2018, lot 431) shows, from a different perspective, the end of the ceremony with Pius VI and Gustav III exiting from the central nave. The details of the choir, with Bassano’s altarpiece surmounted by the Trinity by Jean-Jacques Caffieri, confirm the location of the ceremony.
Th drawing must have been executed in 1783-1784, when Gustav III was in Rome, and may have belonged to a series of watercolors for paintings commissioned by the King. However, Desprez never made the drawing into a painting, only executing the present work and detailed pen studies for some of the figures, such as the sheet with the group of the pope ordaining the bishop in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. NMH 166/1919, NMH 1756/1875, NMH 1810/1875, NMH 170/1919; see Wollin, op. cit., p.185; and Cederlöf and Von Holten, op. cit., p. 21). It was this type of sweeping compositions that attracted the attention of the monarch, resulting in 1784 in the commission of two large canvases depicting religious ceremonies: Gustav III attending Easter mass in Saint Peter’s, and Gustav III attending Midnight Mass, also in Saint Peter’s. For the first composition only a preparatory watercolor survives (Nationalmuseum, inv. NMH Z 9/1963), while for the second both a watercolor and the final painting are known (inv. NM 802 and inv. NMB 397). The present work offers additional evidence of the artistic effervescence brought to the arts by Gustav III during his short stay in Rome in the 1780s.
The setting chosen by Desprez for this large sheet is the choir of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, clearly identifiable by the Baroque architecture and by the main high altar, adorned with Francesco Bassano’s Assumption of the Virgin. In the drawing an important religious ceremony is depicted, the ordination of a bishop, in the presence of a large number of people. On the right, in front of the altar, the enthroned Pope Pius VI, surrounded by a group of ecclesiastics, is blessing a prelate kneeling in front of him. Other members of the church are busy near two tables on which are displayed the paraphernalia necessary for the liturgy: a chalice, an ewer, kegs and patens. On the left, a row of candelabras separates the officiants from the faithful in the nave, while two stands on the side of the main altar are filled with richly dressed characters watching the ceremony. The figure dressed in blue, at the center of the choir loft, can probably be identified as King Gustav III of Sweden. With extraordinary talent Desprez transcribed the atmosphere of the event in the drawing, highlighting the tension between the imposing architecture and the occasion’s solemnity. He drew several religious ceremonies in Rome, further testifying to his interest in this type of subject. While his compositions are rendered with exceptional accuracy, we do not know if the artist was an eyewitness to those ceremonies. A partially colored drawing of a similar size, recently on the art market (Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 29 May 2018, lot 431) shows, from a different perspective, the end of the ceremony with Pius VI and Gustav III exiting from the central nave. The details of the choir, with Bassano’s altarpiece surmounted by the Trinity by Jean-Jacques Caffieri, confirm the location of the ceremony.
Th drawing must have been executed in 1783-1784, when Gustav III was in Rome, and may have belonged to a series of watercolors for paintings commissioned by the King. However, Desprez never made the drawing into a painting, only executing the present work and detailed pen studies for some of the figures, such as the sheet with the group of the pope ordaining the bishop in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. NMH 166/1919, NMH 1756/1875, NMH 1810/1875, NMH 170/1919; see Wollin, op. cit., p.185; and Cederlöf and Von Holten, op. cit., p. 21). It was this type of sweeping compositions that attracted the attention of the monarch, resulting in 1784 in the commission of two large canvases depicting religious ceremonies: Gustav III attending Easter mass in Saint Peter’s, and Gustav III attending Midnight Mass, also in Saint Peter’s. For the first composition only a preparatory watercolor survives (Nationalmuseum, inv. NMH Z 9/1963), while for the second both a watercolor and the final painting are known (inv. NM 802 and inv. NMB 397). The present work offers additional evidence of the artistic effervescence brought to the arts by Gustav III during his short stay in Rome in the 1780s.