Ritratto del pittore Charles de La Fosse (1636 - 1716)
Hyacinthe Rigaud (Perpignan 1659 - Parigi 1743) attribuibile
Hyacinthe Rigaud
(Perpignan 1659 - Paris 1743)
(Perpignan 1659 - Paris 1743)
attributable
Portrait of the painter Charles de La Fosse (1636-1716)
oil on canvas
60 x 52 cm
In a fine frame cm. 113 x 78
The person portrayed in this painting is the painter Charles de La Fosse (1636 - 1716), known as the "best decorative painter of his time", a pupil of Charles Le Brun in Paris and his close collaborator in the decorative works carried out under Louis XIV.
It is a painting that we are inclined to place in the early 18th century and attributable to the painter Hyacinthe RIGAUD (Perpignan 1659 - Paris 1743) - or, for the sake of accuracy, to an author active within his prolific workshop - one of the most significant portrait painters of his time and a great interpreter of the French school, having worked almost exclusively at the courts of Louis XIV and then Louis XV.
Bound by a strong friendship, Rigaud took his fellow painter as a model on numerous occasions: the first of these portraits is the one he painted on an oval canvas in 1681 and now in a private Parisian Collection [1], although the best known is the one preserved today in Berlin's Château de Charlottenburg [2], and which Rigaud exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1704.
Perhaps due in part to the success of that painting, many others followed, including the portrait now in the Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco [3] - which bears the greatest stylistic similarities to our painting - and again the one in a private collection, which went on the antiques market in 1979 (Paris, Palais d'Orsay, 7 December, no. 40)
In addition to the celebrated official portraits of sovereigns, members of the French aristocracy and clergy, Rigaud often gave his best in portraits of his artist friends where, as in our case, he succeeded in combining elegant dignity with great intimacy, an aspect that we can, for example, see in the detail of the unbuttoned shirt, which translates an evident affectionate sympathy for the model.
In works such as these we can grasp Rigaud's sensitivity as a fine psychologist, a delicate, flexible and virtuous artist. The effigy shows the painter in a relaxed pose, his gaze turned to the right, lost outside the composition, but charged with great humanity.
It is therefore a work of remarkable formal and aesthetic elegance. Note the rendering of the facial features, the sharpness of the contours emphasised by the light and the expressive strength of the eyes accentuated by the realism of the facial features.
[1] Portrait of Charles de La Fosse, Rigaud Hyacinthe Private Collection (oil on oval canvas, 83x66, Paris
[2] Portrait of Charles de La Fosse, Rigaud Hyacinthe (Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg). Inv. GKI 2625
[3] Portrait of Charles de La Fosse, Rigaud Hyacinthe (Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco)
The work is presented in a good state of preservation and is completed by a magnificent antique carved wooden frame.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
The painting is sold with a certificate of authenticity and descriptive iconographic card.
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