Description
PROPERTY FROM A FAMILY COLLECTION NICOLAS RÉGNIER MAUBEUGE, FLANDERS CIRCA 1590 - 1667 VENICE A MUSICIAN PLAYING A LUTE TO A SINGING GIRL
inscribed with the number 30 on the reverse of the original canvas
oil on canvas, unlined, on its original strainer
PROVENANCE
Believed to have been acquired by the grandfather of the present owner in the 1920s.
CATALOGUE NOTE
The appearance of this painting for the first time at auction is important, for it sheds light on Nicolas Régnier's oeuvre and, in particular, on his activity in Rome during the third decade of the 17th century. Only nine paintings, of the forty-four that have been attributed to him as having been painted during his Roman period, are actually recorded. Régnier is documented in Rome from 1620, when he is known to have been living with Dirk van Baburen and David de Haen in the district of Sant'Andrea della Valle, but he probably arrived in the city some years prior to that date. Régnier's paintings from his Roman period are markedly Caravaggesque in subject matter and style. As well as being influenced by Bartolomeo Manfredi (as Valentin de Boulogne had also been) Regnier's works can also be closely associated with those of the frenchman Simon Vouet, alongside whom he worked in Rome from 1622 (year in which Vouet returned to Rome from Genoa) to 1625 (year in which Régnier left Rome for Venice). This painting has, in fact, been tentatively attributed to Simon Vouet by some scholars who consider it to have been executed during his Roman sojourn (that is circa 1616-18 or perhaps later, in the mid- to late 1620s). The exceptional condition of this painting - the canvas is unlined and thus still retains all of its original impasto, particularly on the singer's white sleeve - allows one to see what a confident painter Régnier really was and how close he came to Vouet's own painting technique: compare, for example, the sleeve of the gypsy in Vouet's Fortune-Teller in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (inv. no. 6737; reproduced in colour in The Genius of Rome 1592-1623, exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 20 January - 16 April 2001, p. 58, cat. no. 14).
The subject of music in painting had always been represented since the 16th century but it was in Rome, at the time of Caravaggio, that these scenes changed dramatically and that music per se became the central theme of pictures (for a discussion of music in Caravaggesque painting see R. Vodret and C. Strinati, "Painted Music: 'A New and Affecting Manner'", in The Genius of Rome, op. cit., p. 92 ff.). Here the lute-player and singer each play and sing convincingly, and Régnier's accuracy in depicting both the instrument and the musical scores is impressive. The man is playing a 16th-century six-course lute, which would have been considered old-fashioned by the time this picture was painted, as from the early 17th century more courses were commonplace and the shape of the body had changed to a more tear-drop form; as seen in other paintings by Caravaggio and his followers (for example, Caravaggio's Lute-player in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Artemisia Gentileschi's St. Cecilia in the Galleria Spada, Rome; and Theodoor Rombouts' Lute-player in the John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art).
Caravaggio's 'musical' paintings were collected and commissioned by the leading figures in Rome's intellectual circles, namely Cardinal Del Monte and Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani. Joachim von Sandrart informs us that Régnier was patronised by the latter and indeed nine paintings by the artist are recorded in Giustiniani's posthumous inventory of 1638 (cited by A. Lemoine in "L'iter di un caravaggesco nordico: Nicolas Régnier e il movimento naturalista", in Paragone, March 2000, no. 601, pp. 46, 67-8, foonote 25; and for Régnier's employment see J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey- Künste von 1675, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925, p. 368). The foundation of the music academy in Rome in the second half of the 16th century - the Congregazione dei Musici di Roma, from which the Accademia di Santa Cecilia would eventually develop - would certainly have had an influence on the representation of music in painting. In this picture music takes on a central role, not a marginal one: we can almost hear the notes being played on the lute and the concentrated expression of the lute-player shows him trying to keep time with the singer. The girl looks out at us mid-way through singing a note: her mouth is half-open and her finger points delicately to the musical score laid out in front of her. Music has become the sole protagonist of this painting.
The painting is known in another version, with only minor differences, which was known to scholars from black and white photographs held at the Fondazione Longhi and Kunsthistorisches Institut archives in Florence, where it is recorded as with Dr. Curt Benedict in Berlin in 1927. The painting's location today is unknown (see B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Turin 1990, vol. I, p. 160 ("Luteplayer and female singer"); more recently A. Lemoine, op. cit., pp. 61-2, reproduced plate 40, and p. 71, footnote 84; and A. Lemoine, Nicolas Régnier (Maubeuge vers 1588-Venise 1667), un peintre et un marchand de tableaux dans l'Italie du XVIIème siècle, Ph.D. Thesis-Université Paris IV Sorbonne, 2004, pp. 386-7, cat. no. 41, reproduced. Nicolson recorded the ex-Benedict version as measuring 108 by 132 cm. and indeed the composition appears to have an additional 10 cm. or so at the top: this makes the figures sit less happily in the picture space than they do in the present canvas. Only minor differences occur in the composition; such as the pearl on the singer's forehead (absent here), the brooch on her left shoulder, and the decoration on her corset (which in the present canvas is no longer visible due to pigment deterioration).
We are grateful to Annick Lemoine for confirming the attribution of this picture to Régnier on the basis of first-hand inspection. She dates it to the very early 1620s. We are also grateful to Arnaud Brejon de Lavergnée for independently endorsing the attribution to Régnier on the basis of colour transparencies.
