Lot 130: Toussaint Dubreuil (Paris 1562-1602)

Toussaint Dubreuil (Paris 1562-1602)
Mars enthroned, wearing a plumed helmet and holding a spear (recto); A male nude playing a viola da gamba (verso)
with inscription 'Martinus .. Fr[emi]net 16 ..' (partly erased)
black chalk, pen and brown ink (recto); red and black chalk (verso), the lower corners made up, watermark a crowned pot surmounted with letters 'NB'
10 5/8 x 6 5/8 in. (27.1 x 17 cm.)

D. Cordellier, 'Quelques feuilles de Toussaint Dubreuil' in Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Rosenberg, Paris, 2001, pp. 159-61, fig. 3.
D. Cordellier, Toussaint Dubreuil, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2010, p. 61, under no. 10.

Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 18 December 1991, lot 103 (as Hendrick Goltzius).
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 13 July 1997, lot 117 (as Martin Fréminet).

Painter to Henri III and Henri IV of France, Toussaint Dubreuil was also a consummate courtier. From 1589 until 1597, and again in 1601, he was engaged on the decoration of Fontainebleau, developing the decorative scheme initiated by Rosso Fiorentino and Primaticcio and continued under the supervision of Ruggiero de' Ruggieri. The present drawing cannot be linked to any figure in his known works, but can be compared stylistically to the Standing nude warrior in the Musée du Louvre (inv. 26278), as well as to Cupid with two doves in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1998.63), both of which have the same terse, wiry pen-work, dense hatching and physical monumentality. The present sheet, indeed, demonstrates the breadth of artistic influences on Dubreuil's work, combining the forceful musculature of Michelangelo with the sinuous contortions of Northern European Mannerism.

The watermark of the present sheet is very similar that illustrated in Gaudrault, p. 303 (dated to France, 1602).