François Perrier (Pontarlier c. 1594-1649 Paris)
This lot is offered without reserve. SOLD WITHOUT RESERVE
François Perrier (Pontarlier c. 1594-1649 Paris)

A sacrificial scene

Details
François Perrier (Pontarlier c. 1594-1649 Paris)
A sacrificial scene
oil on canvas
55¾ x 51¾ in. (141.5 x 131.5 cm.)
Literature
P. Rosenberg, 'France in the Golden Age: a Postscript', in Metropolitan Museum Journal, XVII, 1982, p. 32.
E. Schleier, 'Review of the exhibition: La peinture française du XVIIe siècle dans les collections américaines', in Kunstchronik, May 1983, no. 36, p. 230 and p. 234, fig. 2.
B. Brejon de Lavergnée, 'New Attributions around Simon Vouet', in Master Drawings, XXIII-XXIV, Autumn 1986, no. 3, pp. 348 and 351.
M. Hilaire, in the exhibition catalogue, Century of Splendour: Seventeenth-Century French Painting in French Public Collections, Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts and elsewhere, 1993, p. 145, under no. 38.
Exhibited
Paris, Galerie Eric Coatalem, François Perrier: Reflections on the Earlier Works from Lanfranco to Vouet/Les premières oeuvres de Lanfranco à Vouet (catalogue by A. L. Clark, Jr.), 27 September-27 October 2001, pp. 31-2, 57, 103-5, 135 and illustrated pp. 77 and 184.
Special notice
This lot is offered without reserve.

Lot Essay

This is the central fragment of a larger composition that dates from circa 1634 on the eve of Perrier's second trip to Rome. The complete composition is known from a small scale copy (121 x 97 cm.), last recorded at Finarte, Rome, 11 November 1980, lot 48, where it was attributed to an anonymous 17th Century Roman artist (Schleier, op. cit., fig. 3).

Although, the subject has so far eluded identification, Schleier tentatively proposed it to be the punishment of the mythological figure Lycurgus, who attempted to imprison Dionysus and his women followers (maenads) and was later blinded.

A preparatory drawing for the figure of the priest who, in the original composition, would have figured at the extreme left and whose cropped right hand is visible here on the left, forms part of the Mathias Polakovits donation to the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

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