Poppy Harvey-Jones
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Lot 60
Fontainebleau School16th CenturyCleopatra
6 December 2017, 15:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street£40,000 - £60,000
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Fontainebleau School, 16th Century
Cleopatra
oil on panel
58.8 x 95cm (23 1/8 x 37 3/8in).
oil on panel
58.8 x 95cm (23 1/8 x 37 3/8in).
Footnotes
Provenance
With the Arcade Gallery, London, 1966
Private Collection, Vienna
Sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 14-15 November, 1990, lot 37
The statuesque nude depicted in the present work fits into the 16th Century French Mannerist tradition best known as the School of Fontainebleau. Large female nudes depicted as various mythical characters emerged as a popular subject at the court of King François I, such as the Nymph of Fontainebleau, designed by Rosso Fiorentino and completed by Primaticcio, which is now known only through printed and painted repetitions. The artists working at the Château of Fontainebleau informed the artistic output of a generation of painters active throughout France, with their images often being disseminated through the fledgling medium of engraving. Jean Cousin, a native of Sens, was one such painter and the present Cleopatra shows an awareness of his work. The large, sculptural nude, clearly influenced by some of Michelangelo's female figures, combined with the unusual representation of the death of Cleopatra of the present painting resonates with both Cousin's Eva Prima Pandora now in the Musée du Louvre (inv. No. RF. 2373) of circa 1550 and his Allegory of Charity now in the Musée Fabre, Montpelier (accession no. 884.3.1).