Benjamin perronnet V5 - Flipbook - Page 89
9. François Boucher
Landscape with a shack
... Decker in two drawings, one in the Louvre, the other in
the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
16. Louis La昀椀tte
... in the land of Israel. At the end of his life, while his army
was at war with the Philistines, Saul consulted a witch. The
ghost of Samuel appears and predicts Saul’s defeat.
Initially a pupil of the engraver Demarteau, La昀椀tte, the
son of a wigmaker, joined the studio of Jean-Baptiste
Regnault (1754-1829) in 1786. He won the Académie’s Prix
de Rome in 1791, and was the last painter sent to Rome
during the reign of Louis XVI. Returning to Paris in 1795,
he successfully turned his attention to decoration and
illustration, somewhat abandoning history painting .
The present drawing is one of his earliest known works. It
was produced in 1790, one year before he was awarded the
Prix de Rome. At the time of its exhibition at the Galerie
Seligmann in 1965, the present drawing was accompanied
by another, of the same dimensions and technique, which
can be considered a pendant. It depicts Orestes being
pursued by the furies and is now kept at the Ackland Art
Museum in Chapel Hill (FIg. 1). Although one is religious
and the other mythological, the two drawings are similar
in that their heroes are plagued by doubt and guilt, and a
fantastic 昀椀gure appears to them, heralding their tragic and
violent end. In both works, light is distributed by creatures
from the beyond, and the artist plays on the relationship
between light and shadow, creating a striking chiaroscuro
e昀昀ect in each case.
The Salon of 1791, where La昀椀tte exhibited for the 昀椀rst time,
featured «Quatre dessins. Sujet d’histoire». It is tempting to
identify the present drawing as one of the works presented
on this occasion, as of course is the Chapel Hill sheet and
two others, The Last Supper and The Denial of Saint Peter,
slightly smaller in size but similar in technique and also
bearing the date 1790, now in the Metropolitan Museum,
New York.
17. Jacques-Louis David
A bishop and two clerics
... the cross are wearing ecclesiastical hats in the 昀椀nal
composition, on which no image appears on the missal,
whereas in the drawing it is inscribed «N/ IMP» for
Napoleon Imperator.
The group seems to have been of great importance to
David in the elaboration of his composition, as evidenced
by the large number of studies he devoted to it. The artist
had studied it three times previously in two drawings in
a notebook in the Louvre, the 昀椀rst two times in a very
summary manner and on two successive folios, the third
time in a more accomplished sheet (Fig. 3), but without
any e昀昀ort to single out the heads or detail the costumes,
as is the case in the present drawing, in which he has also
added grey wash. Summary studies for individual 昀椀gures
in the same group can be seen on the same sketchbook
89
in the Louvre, on another sketchbook also in the Louvre
and 昀椀nally on a sketchbook now in the Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge. It is likely that, as with other ecclesiastical
昀椀gures in the Coronation, David drew inspiration for this
group from a miniature in a medieval manuscript in the
Bibliothèque nationale, such as the Vie et miracles de Saint
Louis. While the group is the focal point of the composition,
and the cross-bearer’s garb rivals that of Napoleon in
splendor, it does not appear that David intended to depict
any identi昀椀able 昀椀gures. In fact, he had his assistant Ignazio
Degotti pose when he repainted the head of the
cross-bearer around August 1806, due to the change in
position of Napoleon, whom he had originally depicted
crowning himself.
The aforementioned Fogg sketchbook contains numerous
昀椀nished and mostly squared studies 昀椀gures in the
Coronation, and it is possible that the present drawing was
originally part of it, but was removed before the pages
were numbered and initialed by David’s sons on the artist’s
death. Other drawings now isolated surely came from it,
and the dimensions of the sheets in the sketchbook
(23.7 x 17.9 cm.) are very close to those of the present
drawing. David probably removed the sheet from
thesketchbook and retouched it with gray wash. This is the
only known 昀椀gure study for the Coronation to have been
retouched in wash. All the others, and there are many, are
in black chalk alone.
The genesis of the Coronation painting is well known.
Shortly before the event of December 4, 1804, Napoleon
commissioned David to paint four huge canvases
depicting the coronation ceremonies: the coronation,
the enthronement, the distribution of the eagles and the
Emperor’s arrival at the Hôtel de Ville. The painter was
supposed to receive 100,000 francs per painting, a colossal
sum which subsequently gave rise to a long battle between
David and the director of the Louvre, Dominique-Vivant
Denon, who only wanted to grant him 40,000 francs per
composition. The Coronation was completed at the end
of 1807, and Napoleon came to admire it on January 4,
1808. Although David had 昀椀rst intended to paint L’arrivée
à l’Hôtel de Ville, he was asked to execute the Distribution
des Aigles 昀椀rst, which was 昀椀nally completed in 1810.
The other two compositions were abandoned. David
eventually received 65,000 francs for the Coronation,
52,000 francs for the Distribution des Aigles, 2,400 francs
for his work on L’Arrivée à l’Hôtel de Ville, plus 12,000
francs a year as Premier Peintre