Copyel original oil painting of the Judgement of

COYPEL, Antoine (1661-1722).
The Judgment of Solomon.
Oil on canvas.
45" x 57" canvas, 52" x 67" framed.

Provenance: Private collection, Philadelphia; Doyle, 2011 - $31,250.

A Historically Significant Painting by Antoine Coypel of the Judgment of Solomon, Used to Create a Gobelin Tapestry.

In her five-volume book titled Etat General des Tapisseries de la Manufacture des Gobelins depuis son origine jusqu'a nos jours, 1600-1900 author Maurice Fenaille devotes chapter four of the third volume (which is dated 1699-1736) to the Old Testament, where she discusses eight works of art by Antoine and Charles Coypel. Stated very clearly on the first page of the chapter, Fenaille notes that Antoine Coypel exhibited paintings he created after scenes from the Old Testament in the Paris Salons of 1699 and 1704. Specifically in 1699 he showed a work titled Le Jugement de Solomon. Later in the chapter, there is a discussion of a different version of Le Jugement de Salomon stating it was painted by Antoine Coypel in 1713 and it goes on to describe the visual aspects of our painting - where the columns are, how the characters are arranged, etc. As scholar Mme. Nicole Garnie notes in an analysis of the painting owned by Arader Galleries, 'this painting is a version of the Judgment of Solomon that Coypel exhibited at the Salon in 1699 and which later provided the composition for a tapestry by the Gobelins factory (1717-1720).