Adoration of the Magi. 18th century French school

Oil on oak panel. French "Neo-Baroque" school of the second half of the 18th century.
Directly inspired by a composition by Luca Giordano now conserved at the Fundacion Casa Ducal de Medinaceli in Seville, our painting presents a scene in which light plays a central role. As if set on a theatrical stage from which a powerful light streams forth, our Holy Family welcomes the royal travelers and their retinue, who have come to pay homage to the Child. Beyond the skilfully orchestrated staging, our painter's pictorial ease delights: the colors are vibrant, the brushstrokes swirling and agile, and the strong impasto amplifies the luminous effects.
Charles-Nicolas Cochin, artistic advisor to King Louis XV, asserted that Italian Baroque "is well worth the classical beauty of Antiquity or Raphael". Thus, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste Hutin, Louis Lagrenée, Hubert Robert and Gabriel-François Doyen took advantage of a stay in Naples to discover the art of Luca Giordano. And in the 1760s/61, the Abbé de Saint-Non, Fragonard's protector and main patron, systematically commissioned him to copy Giordano's works. Could our painting belong to this corpus?
Guillaume Faroult, art historian and chief curator at the Musée du Louvre's Department of Paintings, coined the term "Neo-Baroque" to describe the work of these artists. The works of these French painters share a "strongly colored, impastoed style, with powerful luminous contrasts", reminiscent of the art of Luca Giordano. Fragonard's High Priest Corésus sacrifices himself to save Callirhoé, painted in 1765 and now in the Louvre, is a perfect illustration.


Our Adoration of the Magi is highlighted by an 18th-century frame in gilded wood and yellow Salvator Rosa-style rechampi.
Dimensions: 35 x 46 cm - 53 x 62 cm with frame
Sold with invoice and certificate of appraisal.


Biography
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (Grasse 1732 - Paris 1806) moved to Paris with his family in 1738, where he showed early artistic talent. He was apprenticed to François Boucher at the age of fourteen, after a brief period in Jean Siméon Chardin's studio. In 1752, he won the Grand Prix de l'Académie royale de peinture (Prix de Rome) with his Jeroboam Sacrificing to Idols. A resident of the Palais Mancini (Académie de France in Rome) from 1756 to 1761, he did not adhere to the anti-comanticism advocated by neo-classicism, and developed a personal taste that led him to the Italian Baroque painters of the previous century. With his fluid brushstrokes, he developed a rapid art style (fa' presto) that exuded great naturalness. While at the Académie, he met Jean-Baptiste Greuze and struck up a friendship with Hubert Robert. Although destined to shine in history painting, he was touched by a sense of nature and embarked on a charming career in which libertinism played a central role. The Goncourt brothers, writing in the 1865 Gazette des beaux-arts, said of him that "he has gone further than anyone else in this energetic painting, which captures the impression of things and throws them onto the canvas like an instantaneous image" (Gazette des beaux-arts, 1865).


Bibliography
- WILDESTEIN Daniel and MANDEL Gabriele, L'opera completa di Fragonard, Rizzoli Ed. 1972
- CUZIN Jean-Pierre, Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Vie et œuvre. Catalog complet des peintures. Ed. Herscher 1987.
- BAILEY Colin B., CONISBEE Philip, Au temps de Watteau, Chardin et Fragonard, Yale University Press 2009.
- Collective edited by CAUSA Stefano, Luca Giordano. Le triomphe de la peinture napolitaine, Catalogue of the exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris, Paris Musées 2019
- HILAIRE Michel, SPINOSA Nicola, L'âge d'or de la peinture à Naples de Ribera à Giodano, catalog of the exhibition at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, Lienard Ed. 2015