Louis FINSON (Bruges, 1580 - Amsterdam, 1617) - Lot 4

Louis FINSON (Bruges, 1580 - Amsterdam, 1617) Saint Sebastian Canvas Signed and dated lower left "ALOISIUS. FINSONIUS / FECIT. ANO. 1612 " (Old restorations) 147.5x114.5cm Provenance: Private collection, Marseille; Acquired 1994. The composition of our unpublished painting, signed and dated to the artist's Neapolitan period, was already known from other very similar, unsigned versions. One of these is preserved at the Primatiale Saint-Jean in Lyon (165x115cm), while another was at Alberto di Castro's gallery, Piazza di Spagna, in Rome (157.5x124.5cm) between 2016-2019. The artist often depicted the same subject, sometimes in a different format [1] and in Martyre de Saint Sébastien, attaché par les bourreaux à l'Église de Rougiers (Var). Our Saint Sebastian is strongly influenced by Caravaggesque realism, and can be dated just after the Allegory of the Four Elements at the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation - the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston, and just before Samson et Dalila, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille. Trained in his hometown, perhaps in his father's studio, Louis Finson traveled to Rome in the early 1600s, before being documented in Naples in March 1605. Sharing a studio with Abraham Vinck (1574/1575-1619), in 1607 they welcomed Caravaggio on the run from Rome, following the murder he had committed. During his stay in Naples until 1612, the artist was commissioned to paint an Annunciation (Capodimonte Museum). In early 1613, he left for Rome, arriving in Marseille by February 27 of the same year, accompanied by the painter Martin Faber (1587-1648). Under the protection of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, he painted portraits and religious pictures for several towns in Provence (Arles, Aix). His journey continued in Toulouse in 1614-1615, then in Paris in 1615, before ending in Amsterdam in 1616. Saint Sebastian was a favorite subject of the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, after the Council of Trent, protecting people from the plague. The Roman soldier is more or less riddled with arrows, depending on the painter. In our case, Finson chose to depict them all parallel. What's more, his face is tilted back in baroque ecstasy, in keeping with the artist's taste for strong, disconcerting images, rich in emotion and movement. His paintings testify to a deep knowledge of the Neapolitan Caravaggio's style, as shown by our canvas, which develops a high-contrast chiaroscuro, with bronze highlights for the skin of his figure, a certain outrageous expressionism and a taste for spectacular images designed to strike the viewer. [1] Didier Bodart had observed a certain propensity for Louis Finson to depict Saint Sebastian (Bodart, Louis Finson (Bruges, before 1580-Amsterdam 1617), Brussels, 1970). Among the paintings mentioned, he cites a work said to have belonged to J. P. Roux in Marseille, sold in 1866. Another similar painting was described by Philippe de Chennevières-Pointel in 1847. Finally, Marcantonio Filomarino's 1634 inventory lists "Un S. Sebastiano del Finzone", in horizontal format, sold at the Dorotheum on April 24, 2018, lot 91.