A reclining male nude, his left arm raised (recto); Studies of the head of a woman wearing a veil and of a left hand holding a staff (verso)

Details

Antoine Coypel (Paris 1661-1722)
A reclining male nude, his left arm raised (recto); Studies of the head of a woman wearing a veil and of a left hand holding a staff (verso)
black, red and white chalk on blue paper
12½ x 18 7/8 in. (32.3 x 47.7 cm.)

Literature

N. Garnier, Antoine Coypel (1661-1722), Paris, 1989, p. 233, no. 551, figs. 473 (recto) and 475 (verso).

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Lot Essay

The male nude on the recto is a study for Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, battling the Chimera (now lost), which was probably one of Coypel's final works, as it was listed among his unfinished paintings in his son Charles-Antoine's posthumous studio sale in 1753. The same figure appears at the lower left of a compositional study for the painting in the Louvre (inv. 25846). The studies on the verso may relate to the allegorical figure of Religion in Coypel's Louis XIV with Religion, Guile and Strength, engraved by Bernard Picart in 1709.

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