Footnotes

Provenance
With Kleinberger & Co, New York, from whom acquired in 1960 (as Simon Vouet)
The Collection of Mr and Mrs Joseph McMicking, San Francisco and thence by descent

Exhibited
Travelling exhibition, Héritage de France French Painting 1610-1760,: Montreal, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 6 October-6 November 1961; Quebec, Le Musée de la province de Québec, 16 November-16 December 1961; Ontario, The National Gallery of Canada, 4 January-4 February 1962; and Toronto, The Art Gallery of Toronto, 16 February-18 March 1962, cat. no. 81 (as Simon Vouet)
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museum, on loan, August 1979 - spring 1980 (as Simon Vouet)

Literature
P. Rosenberg, 'Nouvelles acquisitions. Musee du Louvre. Un tableau de Claude Vignon' in La Revue du Louvre et des musées de France, 1968, vol. I, note 17, p. 43, fig. 238 (as Simon Vouet)
B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Oxford, 1979, vol. I, p. 211, cat. no. 731, vol. II, ill. (as Simon Vouet)
P. Pacht Bassani, Claude Vignon 1593-1670, Paris, 1992, p. 176, cat. no. 21, ill.
J-P. Cuzin, Figures de la réalité. Caravagesques français, Georges de La Tour, les frères Le Nain..., Paris, 2010, pp. 126, cat. no. 139, ill. fig. 139 (as Claude Vignon)

We are grateful to Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée for confirming the attribution to Claude Vignon and for suggesting that this portrait was executed during Vignon's stay in Rome in the 1620s.

Traditionally regarded as a work by Simon Vouet, Jean-Pierre Cuzin was the first to recognise this portrait as by Vignon. Later, in her catalogue entry for the work, Bassani notes a similarity, both in handling and physiognomy, with the Portrait of a young man, previously with Sestieri in Rome (see P. Pacht Bassani, Claude Vignon 1593-1670, Paris, 1992, p. 175, cat. no. 20). It has been suggested that this latter portrait may depict François Langlois, called Ciatres as the sitter resembles that in the recognised portrait of him now on loan to the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley.