Northern French School, circa 1520

King Solomon (?),
oil on canvas, 169 x 60.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 18 February 1987, lot 19 (as circle of Ottavio Vannini);
Private collection, Italy;
where acquired by the present owner

The scepter the man carries in the present painting, as well as the crown he wears, imply that he is a king. The patterned robe simulating silk, sandals and turban suggest a vaguely ancient and ‘oriental’ identification, associated in European Renaissance painting with a figure from the Bible. The full beard suggests that he might be Solomon. The sharp angularity of the figure, the long face and the elongated fingers resemble the characteristics of artists who were active in the Low Countries from circa 1510 to 1550, such as Marinus van Reymerswaele and Jan van Hemessen in Antwerp or Jan Cornelisz. Van Oostsanen in Amsterdam.

It is possible to associate the use of colour, including violet, the bright blue leggings, and the exotic touches, stance and mannered, elegant gesture of the hands, with the ‘Antwerp Mannerists’, artists who also worked in the Northern Netherlands and Northern France over a broad period from 1512 to 1530. However, the application of paint here appears somewhat softer and less precise than that associated with the harder and tighter handling of paint usually associated with Netherlandish artists, who had not been exposed to Italian art.

Therefore the painter of this work was exposed to the influence of Netherlandish art, but was active outside the Netherlands and the present picture appears to have been executed by a French artist from the first part of the sixteenth century. More precisely, an artist associated with what Cecille Scalliérez has recently called a Dutch current in French art, which was evident in Champagne and Burgundy (see François Ier et l’art des Pays Bas, Paris 2017, pp. 336ff.). The present work particularly relates to the work of Grégoire Guérard, an artist whom Fréderic Elsig identified as being active in Troyes and elsewhere in Champagne (Grégoire Guérard et la peinture à Troyes, in: Peindre en France à la Renaissance. Les courants stylistiques au temps de Louis XII et de François Ier, Milan 2011, pp. 129-135).

The present painting can be compared with a painting of the Taking of Christ attributed to Guérard and dated circa 1512, or a Penitent St. Peter, also dated 1512 (both illustrated in colour in François Ier et l’art des Pays Bas, pp. 352-353; the Saint Peter is illustrated in Peindre en France, p. 130). The similarities between these paintings are most evident in the depiction of the hands, the faces with long aquiline noses, and the broad flat draperies. The mature oriental type can also be seen in a painting attributed ‘Grégoire Guérard?’ (François Ier et l’art des Pays Bas, p. 339). One must, however, be cautious in attributing paintings to Guérard as there seem to be variety of styles within the works attributed to him. Even his work includes multiple influences and developments, there are certain details associated with his manner of painting, such as the dark shadows seen on the skin of figures in the Taking of Christ, which are not found in the present painting of a king. Moreover, this painting is on canvas, whilst paintings given to Guérard are on panel. It is possible to say, however, that the present work appears to have been produced in Northern France, probably Champagne, circa 1515-20 from the circle of Grégoire Guérard.

We are grateful to Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann for his help in cataloguing this lot.