Attributed to Claude MELLAN (1598 - 1688) - Lot 25

Attributed to Claude MELLAN (1598 - 1688) Portrait of a Courtesan Canvas 98 x 72.5 cm (Old restorations) Provenance : Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel George V (Ader, Picard, Tajan), June 22, 1990, no. 101 (Claude Mellan). Bibliography : - M. Préaud, Claude Mellan incisore, in the exhibition catalog Claude Mellan, gli anni romani, un incisore tra Vouet e Bernini, Rome, 1989-1990, p. 73 ; - L. Ficacci, Ipotesi su Mellan pittore in the exhibition catalog Claude Mellan, gli anni romani, un incisore tra Vouet e Bernini, Rome, 1989-1990, pp. 365-366 and p. 371 note 19, reproduced on p. 365; - Exhibition catalog Simon Vouet (les années italiennes 1613/1627), Nantes, Musée de Beaux-Arts, Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2008- 2009, quoted p. 197. Celebrated as the greatest French engraver of the 17th century for his virtuoso prints, such as La Sainte Face du Christ, Claude Mellan is also documented as a painter. Civil status records refer to him as "Peintre et Graveur du Roy". The Barberini inventory of 1631 lists several paintings by him. Sandrart, who knew him in Rome, and Charles Perrault cite him as such, and several of his engravings bear the letter in (venit) pinx (it) sculp (sit), proof that he did indeed paint. There was once a hypothesis, now abandoned, that he was the author of the Hérodiade in Montpellier's Musée Fabre. Sylvain Kerspern has offered to return three paintings with religious and mythological subjects. Our painting is clearly part of Simon Vouet's entourage in Rome. Mellan arrived in the papal capital as early as 1624 and returned to France in 1636. This portrait of a "beauty" alludes to Caravaggio's famous courtesan Fillide Melandroni, destroyed in the Berlin Museum in 1945, while the pose echoes that of Raphael's Fornarina (Rome, Palazzo Barberini). Here, Mellan modulates Caravaggesque chiaroscuro: the contrast of brown and red tones is broken by the whiteness of the garment. The young woman wears a sumptuous silk shawl, embroidered with gold and silver thread, meticulously sewn into circular motifs that follow the shape of the fabric. The scarf highlights the elegance of her gesture, her delicately placed fingers; while her intense, direct gaze evokes portraits by Caravaggio. Our model can be compared to Mellan's Study of a Nude Woman in Red Chalk in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (fig. 1, 14.1 x 10.9 cm), in which the same feminine type and the same indocile way of drawing hair can be seen. Further comparisons with his engravings are possible, in particular with Loth and his Daughters, in which the draped movements and tapering hands are similar.