Lot 75: Nicolas Colombel , Sotteville-lès-Rouen 1644 - 1717 Paris A Classical Landscape with Venus and Cupid accompanied by the Three Graces oil on canvas

oil on canvas

measurements note 115 by 148 cm.; 45 1/4 by 58 1/4 in.

This highly classical painting was almost certainly painted in Paris in around 1700 and is dedicated to the theme of Love. Venus, the Goddess of Love and Fertility, is accompanied by her son Cupid and both figures are depicted in a triumphal chariot drawn by a pair of doves, whose fidelity made them one of the Goddess's many traditional attributes. Standing before Venus are her handmaidens, the Three Graces (Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia), who are arranged in the traditional Renaissance grouping, the lateral figures facing outwards and the central figure with her back to the viewer. One of the Graces reaches out with a wreath of myrtle (an evergreen shrub sacred to Venus, symbolising everlasting love and conjugal fidelity) to crown Cupid, who holds before him a sharp-pointed arrow drawn from his quiver. In the right middle ground the River God Alpheus reclines with his arm around the maiden Arethusa, whilst swans (whose beauty closely associated them with Venus) float in the waters beyond, with an idealized, classical city visible on the far shore. The painting is entirely characteristic of Nicolas Colombel and is painted in a highly classicizing style, which reveals the artist's clear debt to the work of his fellow countryman Nicolas Poussin. After studying in Paris under Pierre de Seve (1623-1695), Colombel travelled to Rome, probably before 1680, where he was strongly influenced by the work of Raphael and Poussin, the latter of whose drawings and paintings he is known to have copied. In 1686 Colombel is recorded as a member of the Painter's Accademia di San Luca in Rome, and although it is not known how long he remained there, he had returned to Paris by 1693, for the following year he was named a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, becoming associate professor in 1701 and professor four years later. On account of the paucity of dated and securely documented works a clear chronology for the artist's oeuvre is difficult to establish. The style, overall mise-en-scène, and choice of subject matter of the present work however can be compared closely to the artist's painting of Bacchus and Ariadne, listed by Blunt as in a private collection, Paris, which is signed and dated 1699.υ1 Furthermore, the distinctive treatment of the landscape, the figure types and handling of light have clear parallels with the artist's painting of Atalanta and Hippomenes, sold in these Rooms, 6 December 2006, lot 41 (for £512,000), which can almost certainly be identified with the artist's treatment of the subject exhibited at the Paris Salon in the same year, 1699. On this basis, therefore, it seems plausible to suggest a tentative dating for the present work to around this date; a time during which the artist was working in Paris and continued to adhere to the style of the artist whose work he so admired, and to whom ironically many of his own paintings would subsequently be misattributed - Nicolas Poussin.

We are grateful to Karen Chastagnol for endorsing the attribution to Nicolas Colombel. She will include the painting in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist. 1. See A. Blunt, "Nicolas Colombel", in Revue de L'Art, 1970, vol. IX, p.33, reproduced fig. 17.