EXAMPLE PAGE-EBOOK-CATALOG-Salon Dessin - Flipbook - Page 79
Every year without interruption until 1748, one of
them was commissioned to design at least one
of the two “macchines“ that adorned the Piazza
Farnese in front of the Spanish embassy. From 1738
to 1740, it was Pierre Ignace Parrocel, then François
Hutin from 1741 to 1743, and finally Louis-Joseph le
Lorrain from 1744 to 1748. Their ephemeral creations
are well known thanks to the prints that were made
from them to be offered to the dignitaries of the
Sacred College and the Kingdom of Naples. The
first machina was set on fire on the evening of
the tribute, the second on the following night, as
a prelude to festivities enjoyed throughout Rome.
The engraving of the procession shows the “prima
macchina“ drawn by Le Lorrain in 1746. However,
according to the date on the first engraving, the
drawing represents the 1748 ceremony which took
place after vespers on Friday 28 June, the eve of the
feast of St Peter and St Paul. More than a historical
description, these two engravings, the second
scene of which was therefore prepared by our
drawing, convey the picturesqueness of one of the
most important festive events of the year in Rome.
In 1748, Jean Barbault had recently arrived in Rome,
probably in February of the previous year. A pupil
of Jean Restout according to Jean-François de Troy,
an unsuccessful competitor for the Grand Prix
of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture
in 1745, he had travelled at his own expense and
was not a “pensionnaire“ at the Mancini Palace. He
nevertheless took part in the famous Caravan of the
Sultan in Mecca, a Turkish masquerade performed
in Rome by the “pensionnaires“ of the Académie
de France and their friends during the carnival
in 1748. The director of the Académie de France,
Jean-François de Troy, commissioned him to paint
a series of twenty pictures of his fellow students
in costume between spring and autumn. At the
same time he contributed two etchings for the
Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e moderna published
that year by Fausto Amidei. In 1751, he painted The
Masquerade of the Four Parts of the World, a huge
procession over four metres long evoking a parade
that was probably never held (Besançon, Musée
des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, inv. D.843.1.10) and
began his famous series of small paintings of Italian
costumes, often repeated.
The first known works in the artist’s chronology,
this drawing and the two etchings representing
the Chinea thus bear the seeds of what made
Barbault’s success: a picturesque vision of the
Roman people and nobility, with their daily life
punctuated by religious festivals and solemn
ceremonies in a grandiose setting, built by men
78 and sculpted by the centuries.
Nicolas Lesur
Louis-François CASSAS
A caravan in Palmyra
In 1784, Cassas discovered the Levantine territories
with the Count of Choiseul-Gouffier (1752-1817), who
had been appointed ambassador to Constantinople.
Sent on a mission to the southern provinces of the
Ottoman Empire, the young draughtsman travelled
through Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Lower Egypt
and Cyprus. The highlight of this trip was a visit to
Palmyra in 1785, disguised as a Bedouin. There he
made numerous surveys of the ancient remains but
also drew the Bedouins, camels and horses that
made up the caravans.
After an expedition lasting more than fourteen
months, the artist returned to Constantinople in
January 1786 with a voluminous iconographic
documentation. He then moved to Rome where
he worked on the illustrations of his Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phénicie, de la Palestine
et la Basse-Egypte, of which only two of the three
planned volumes appeared in 1799.
None of the engravings in the published volumes
are related to this very large drawing, but there is an
anonymous print (a proof of which is in the Getty
Research Institute) which attests to the artist’s work
on the subject. Many of the motifs in this engraving
are direct borrowings from the present drawing.
Several other sheets on the same subject, some in
watercolour, are known (see, for example, cat. exp.
Louis-François Cassas 1756-1827 dessinateur voyageur, Tours and Cologne, 1994-1995, no. 83).
This large drawing, made from numerous sketches
taken on the spot, is striking for the originality of its
composition. Cassas chose to depict the junction of
two processions in an almost abstract space, without any shadows, whose depth is only suggested
by the scale of the figures represented. If the artist
limits his setting to a few colonnades and other
ruins quickly suggested in a few strokes of black
stone, he gives all his attention to the characters and
animals. With a miniaturist’s precision, he describes
the heavy packs carried by the camels as well as
the disparity of the ethnic costumes. Along the processions, we can see Kurds wearing pointed hats,
on horseback, armed with long spears, charged
with protecting the caravan from looters. Thanks to
his work on the motif, Cassas had at his disposal a
veritable repertory of costumes and attitudes for this
type of drawing. In this way, the set becomes a kind
of theatre stage where he can introduce the desired
actors. The group in the lower left-hand corner is a
good example of this process, combining classical
horsemen with a typically nomadic coffee-break
scene
No doubt the artist has taken some liberties, notably by depicting some of the Bedouins in short
clothing revealing the torsos, arms and legs of
neo-classical warriors. His intention seems to be to
offer a composition that evokes the cosmopolitan
bustle of an oriental caravan criss-crossing the
ruins.
Maximilien Ambroselli
Louis-François CASSAS
A wedding in Cairo
Leaving Constantinople in October 1784,
Louis-François Cassas visited Greece and a large
part of the Levant before arriving at the port of
Damietta, in Egypt, in March 1785. The artist sailed
up the Nile to Cairo via Mansoura. Although he only
stayed ten days in the city, he brought back a multitude of studies from his stay, which he took care to
catalogue and clean up in Rome and then in Paris,
as part of his project to illustrate the Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phénicie, de la Palestine et
de la Basse Egypte, commissioned by the Count of
Choiseul-Gouffier.
The present drawing, depicting a wedding in Cairo,
can be compared with an engraving of the same
subject published in the luxurious work published
in 1799 (Le voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la
Phénicie, de la Palestine et de la Basse Egypte,
tome III, Paris, 1799, pl. 63). Against a background
of architecture quickly sketched in black stone, a
multitude of characters meticulously described
in pen stretch out on either side of the wedding
procession. The scene is partly described in the
note of the Voyage pittoresque, the young bride,
“veiled and flanked by two of her closest relatives,
walks under a canopy carried by four slaves [...].
Musicians on camels make the air resound with
the sound of their enormous drums“. These festivities were usually held at night by the light of torches
and candles. Cassas, concealed under an oriental
costume, had to mingle with the crowd to observe
the procession and capture some quick sketches.
Originally, the position of the head and body was
to be even more inclined. The artist reframed his
drawing and consequently had to complete the left
corner. Prud’hon reframed several of his academies
in a similar way (see, for example, S. Laveissière, op.
cit., nos. 189 and 192).
The drawing will be included by Sylvain Laveissière
in his catalogue raisonné of Prud’hon’s work in
preparation.
Pierre-Paul PRUD’HON
The shipwreck of Virginie
Study for the print by Barthélémy Roger in the 1806
edition of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie,
published by Didot. With the exception of the present sheet, the original drawings for this edition - by
François Gérard, Anne-Louis Girodet, Louis Lafitte
and Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune - are bound in
the author’s copy on vellum, which has been kept
at the Bibliothèque nationale since 1949.
Commissioned from Prud’hon in September 1804,
the drawing was to be completed in January 1805.
Two preparatory drawings by Prud’hon are known
(Guiffrey, op. cit., nos. 1075 and 1076), the second is
in the New York Public Library, Spencer Collection,
and the Louvre holds a copy of the composition
drawn by Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte (Inv. MI 603).
François GÉRARD
Gérard, whose mother was Italian, spent the first
years of his life in Italy before his family moved to
Paris and he began his training as a painter in the
workshops of Pajou, Brenet and then David. He
came second to Girodet in the 1791 Prix de Peinture,
but went to Rome with his family and stayed there
until 1793. It was during this stay that he produced
these two landscapes, no doubt initially in black
stone on the spot, then embellishing them with
brush and wash once back in his studio, following
the method of his master David. In taking up his
drawings, Gérard modified the compositions
somewhat, making it more difficult to identify the
Maximilien Ambroselli
places depicted.
Even more than David’s Roman landscapes, these
Pierre Paul PRUD’HON
two drawings are close to those executed by
Head of a young man
Jean-Germain Drouais in Italy between 1784 and
The same model, in a very similar position, can be 1788 (see for example, P. Ramade, Jean-Germain
found on a drawing in the Musée des Arts décora- Drouais 1763-1788, cat. exp. Rennes, Musée des
tifs in Paris (S. Laveissière, Prud’hon ou le rêve du
Beaux-Arts, 1985, nos. 536, 549, 570 or 576).
bonheur, cat. exp. Paris, Grand Palais and New York, Another view of Rome by Gérard, very similar in
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997, no. 197 and cat. execution and size, is in the Louvre (inv. RF35556;
exp. Le dessin sans réserve. Collections du musée see also inv. RF35545 and RF35546).
des Arts décoratifs, Paris, 2020, p. 125, ill.)
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