Lot 225: JEAN LEMAIRE PARIS 1597 - 1659

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

THE REST ON THE FLIGHT TO EGYPT

measurements note
101.3 by 133.7 cm.; 39 7/8 by 52 5/8 in.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

The Earls of Caledon, London, by 1857 (as Poussin);
Caledon sale, London, Christie's, 9 June 1939, lot 61 (as Le Maire Poussin);

EXHIBITED

Heim Gallery, London 1990, no.31;

LITERATURE

G. Waagen, Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, vol. IV, 1857, p.151 (as Nicolas Poussin);
A. Blunt, 'Jean Lemaire: painter of architectural fantasies', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. LXXXIII, no. 487, October 1943, p.242, p.II D;
E. Brunetti, 'Some unpublished works by Codazzi, Salucci, Lemaire and Patel', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. C, September 1958, p.315, reproduced p.317, fig.27;
A. Busiri Vici, 'Opere inedite Romane di Jean Lemaire', in Palatino, vol. IX, 1965, p.168;
L. Salerno, Landscape Painters of the Seventeenth Century in Rome, Rome 1976, vol. II, p.488, reproduced p.491, pl. 80.3, vol. III, p.1048;
M. Bellamy (ed.), Three Eyes: the old master paintings from different viewpoints, Heim gallery, London, June 6th to August 10th, 1990, London 1990, p. 92, no. 31;
D.Jaffé, 'Exhibition Reviews', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXII, no. 1049, August 1990, p.591, reproduced fig.40;
M.Fagiolo dell'Arco, Jean Lemaire, pittore "antiquario", Rome 1996, p.80, reproduced p.81, fig. 6.39 (detail), p.192, cat. no. 35, reproduced p.193.

NOTE

The sarcophagus of St. Helena, which Lemaire would have found at the Casino al Quirinale, depicts the Rape of Proserpina. This bas-relief, very popular at the time, appears in two entries of François Perrier's Icones et Segmenta (1645, plates 15-16), was engraved by Bernardino Capitelli (from Cassiano del Pozzo's workshop) and can be found on a page of the Museo Cartaceo (Windsor Castle). Lemaire shifts the rape itself to the very centre of the design, flanked on the left by the embracing Oceanides with the armed Minerva, and on the right by the quadriga of rearing horses with Mercury, and Earth lying down with a cornucopia. That the sarcophagus with the Rape of Proserpina exists in so many versions (Palazzo Barberini, Musée du Louvre) only attests to its fame; indeed, another was found in the Villa Medici (G.A.Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi: Le Sculture, 1958, no.257c), and another owned by Vincenzo Giustiniani, today in Rome, Palazzo Rospigliosi, is known through two drawings by Nicolas Poussin, one in Moscow, Pushkin Museum, and the other in Chantilly (P.Rosenberg, L.-A.Prat (ed.), Nicolas Poussin. La collection du Musée Condé à Chantilly, Paris 1994, p. 190, no. 81, reproduced).

The subject of the present work, the flight into Egypt, is echoed in the shape of the pyramid in the mid-distance, while the violence of the massacre from which the holy family are fleeing is reflected in the story carved on the sarcophagus behind them. A smaller version of the present work can be found in Rome, private collection (see M.Fagiolo dell'Arco, under Literature, p.192, cat. no. 36, reproduced p.193).

While the present work is not dated, Fagiolo dell'Arco places it between 1632 and 1638, during the period when Lemaire fell under the influence of Nicolas Poussin.