Nicolas POUSSIN (Les Andelys 1594 - Rome 1665) - Lot 21

Nicolas POUSSIN (Les Andelys 1594 - Rome 1665) Venus spied on by two satyrs Canvas 70 x 95.5 cm (Restorations) Provenance : - Possibly collection of Antoine Benoist (1632-1717) 1 ; - A painting with a similar subject is mentioned in the Walpole, 1st Earl of Oxford, Norfolck sale, 1748, under no. 41, although it is not certain that this is our version; - Probably Christie's London, Hawley sale, June 22, 1839, no. 82; - Collection Leonard Holmes à Court, 4th baron Heytesbury, Heytesbury (according to Tancred Borenius, 1933). - The painting passed to France around 1933; - Paul Jamot Collection (1863-1939); - His sale after his death, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, February 10, 1943, no. 12, as "Nicolas Poussin"; - Sale in Paris, Hôtel Drouot, March 31, 1950, no. F, as "Poussin"; - Private collection, France. Bibliography: - Tancred Borenius, An Unrecorded Poussin, The Burlington Magazine, July 1933, Vol. 63, n°364, p.3. - Anthony Blunt, "Letter. A Mythological painting by Poussin", The Burlington Magazine, CIII, n°701, August 1961, p. 458, note 15. - Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: Critical Catalogue, London: Phaidon, 1966, p. 178, R112 (Paintings wrongly attributed), rejected but states that he has not seen the work, rejects in the same notice the Zurich and London paintings, now accepted by critics, and creates a Heytesbury Master, now assimilated to Poussin's youth. - Jacques Thuillier, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Nicolas Poussin, Flammarion, Milan-Paris, 1974, p. R98, not reproduced. - Jacques Thuillier, Nicolas Poussin, Paris, Flammarion, 1994, p. 266, no. B6 and p. 273, no. R85. - Nicolas Milovanovic and Mickaël Szanto, Poussin et l'amour : la Vénus épiée par deux satyres retrouvée, Revue de l'Art, n° 198/2017-4, pp. 69 -76. Our painting will be included in Pierre Rosenberg's catalog raisonné of Poussin's painted works, to be published by Flammarion in 2025. Exhibition: Poussin et l'amour, musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, exhibition November 26, 2022 - March 5, 2023, catalog Musée des Beaux-Arts, In fine, 2023, pp. 181-183, n°12 (notice by Mickaël Szanto). Rediscovered by Tancred Borenius in 1933, studied by Paul Jamot, Louvre curator and Poussin specialist, and positively cited by Jacques Thuillier, this work was not included in the artist's catalogs raisonnés during the 20th century, as it was not easily accessible to researchers2. However, thanks to a scholarly publication in 2017, followed by restoration, its attribution to the artist was confirmed when it was exhibited at the Musée de Lyon in 2022. Our painting belongs to Nicolas Poussin's youth, a period of mythological, hedonistic subjects that precede the more serious, philosophical compositions that would dominate his later work. On several occasions, he uses the theme of Venus spied on by satyrs to depict a sensual female nude. This was the moment when he began to find his own style, synthesizing both the Venetian touch (Titian's Venus, the golden light) and the paintings of Mola and Testa, which he transformed thanks to cultivated ancient references (here, he draws inspiration from a Roman crater with a Bachic scene known as the Tazza Cezi 100 B.C., Rome, Torlonia collection). The painting is part of a series of similar or very similar subjects dating from 1625-1626: Nymph spied on by two shepherds (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, ill.1), Venus surprised by satyrs (Zurich, Kunsthaus, ill. 2), Venus spied on by two satyrs (London, The National Gallery), Landscape with Venus and Adonis (Montpellier, Musée Fabre), Mercure, Hersé and Aglaure (Beaux-Arts de Paris)3. These scenes are set in bucolic landscapes, where the twilight atmosphere lends great poetic effect. Venus' body stands out against a white drapery. Our painting and those of this group of works testify to a period of intense creativity, when the thirty-year-old artist was finding his style. Filled with promise, hope and sensuality, they are a prelude to great masterpieces such as La Nourriture de Bacchus (Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1626), featuring the same sensual female nude with upside-down head, and L'Inspiration de Poète (idem, 1628). Two copies of our painting, with minor variations, are known 4. 1 See Andrea Daninos, La collezione d'arte di Antoine Benoist, Prospettiva - 167/168, Luglio-Ottobre 2017. 2 Not included in catalogs by Doris Wild, 1980; Christopher Wright, 1985 and 2007; Alain Merot 1990 and 2011. 3 It could also be compared with Nymph and Satyr or Jupiter and Antiope from the Jeff Koons collection, whose attribution has been disputed orally by some historians. 4 Sale in Paris, Hôtel Drouot, May 28.