Nicolas CHAPERON (Châteaudun 1612 - Lyon 1654/55) - Lot 27

Nicolas CHAPERON (Châteaudun 1612 - Lyon 1654/55) Bacchus and Midas at the source of the Pactolus Canvas 102 x 134.5 cm (Old restorations) Provenance : - Earl of Yarborough sale, London, Christie's, July 12, 1929, no. 29 (as C. A. Dufresnoy); Reported on the back of a photograph at Oscar Rosenberg, 27 Kungsgatan, Stockholm (but this name is that of the photographer, well reported at this address as a film agency in the 1930s, rather than the owner); - Anonymous sale, Finarte, Rome, November 20-21, 1985, no. 544 (as attributed to Jacques Stella). Bibliography: - Catalog of the exhibition Autour de Poussin, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1994, Réunion des musées nationaux, p. 51 (reproduced), notice by Gilles Chomer; - S. Laveissière, D. Jacquot, G. Kazerouni, Nicolas Chaperon (1612- 1654/1655), du graveur au peintre retrouvé, Nîmes, 1999, pp. 25-26 and pp. 149-150, fig. 38a (Location unknown). A pupil of Simon Vouet, Nicolas Chaperon was long best known for his engravings. His pictorial corpus was only reconstituted twenty-five years ago and now includes some twenty paintings. While Vouet's influence was preponderant in his early works and large altarpieces, from his arrival in Rome, around 1642, he adopted Poussin's style, depicting antique subjects as pretexts for bacchanalia worthy of the great master. Our painting was successively attributed to Poussin, Perrier, Dufresnoy, Loir and Stella, before the name Chaperon was definitively established, a reattribution due to Sylvain Laveissière. Our painting can be compared with Vœu de Midas (Basel, Kunstmuseum)1 , probably painted by Nicolas Chaperon during this Italian period. The subject is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book XI): King Midas, realizing the vanity of his power - to turn everything he touches into gold - purifies himself in the river Pactolus in order to free himself. Poussin also treated the subject, choosing other episodes from this legend2. A preparatory drawing is preserved in Besançon, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie3 , and shows a few variations: the frieze composition is more static than the drawing, and some characters, notably Midas, are not in the same positions. The drunken Silenus on the right has been removed from the final composition. 1 Canvas, 100 x 136 cm, Basel, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum. Despite their similar formats and different proportions, Sylvain Laveissière does not see them as a pair, op. cit. p. 26. 2 Midas suppliant Bacchus, canvas, 98 x 130 cm, Münich, Alte Pinakothek, Le Bain de Midas dans le Pactole, canvas, 98 x 73 cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Midas au bord du Pactole, canvas, 50 x 66 cm, Ajaccio, Musée Fesch. 3 Pen, brown ink, brown wash, over traces of black stone, ironed with point, on lined paper, 178 x 232 mm, op. cit. p.149