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il on canvas, Roman school of the second half of the 17th century, attributed to François Nicolas de Bar.
Saint Matthew reports in his Gospel that "when the Magi had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said: Arise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt and stay there until I speak to you: for Herod will seek the child to destroy him". Although Jesus escaped death, the wrath of the Judean king fell indiscriminately on all the infants in Bethlehem. Our painter situates this hecatomb in a palatial setting far removed from the small Galilean village. Determined-looking men put the innocent to the sword, while spearmen in the background guard the only exit to ensure that no one escapes. In this tumultuous in camera setting, the artist details the despair of each of the mothers and their children. In the foreground, one of them points to the corpse of her infant, staring at the viewer as if to take him as witness. While some cry out their grief, others hope to save their offspring. A flurry of panicked gestures, contrappostos and swordplay unfolds before the eyes of those perched on the palace floor, like spectators in a play in which emotion takes precedence over bloody realism.
This painting reveals the many influences that permeated the Roman artistic milieu in the second half of the 17th century, which was divided between followers of Pietro da Cortona's Baroque style on the one hand, and Nicolas Poussin's classicism on the other. The art of François Nicolas de Bar, to whom we attribute our painting, skilfully navigates between these currents. Rediscovered by the art historian Jacques Thuillier, this painter from Lorraine displays a certain talent in the execution of figures whose drawing sometimes evokes that of Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican. However, the Mannerist parallel ends there, as François Nicolas de Bar is fully in line with the great Baroque tradition, with his emphasis on the expression of human passions. Indeed, here he succeeds in depicting the distress that grips each protagonist, despite the frenzy of the action. His Atticism is further evidenced by his choice of antiquisite architecture, such as the central fountain bearing the effigy of a pagan god, and the statues adorning the surrounding wall. This synthetic solution, somewhere between Baroque and Classicism, lends the work a highly theatrical quality that is also found in his Death of Sapphira (in the Louvre), which was once attributed to Pierre Mignard. François Nicolas de Bar's career is thus a mirror image of that of his compatriot Claude Gellée: that of a young Lorrain who, attracted by the exceptional artistic heartland of Rome, built his career there and made it his own, thanks as much to Mannerist memories as to great Italian lessons.
Our composition is set off by a powerful 17th-century Italian frame in carved and gilded wood.
Dimensions: 62 x 72 cm - 94 x 107 cm with frame
Sold with invoice and certificate of appraisal.
Biography: François Nicolas de Bar (Bar-le-Duc, c. 1632 - Rome, Jan. 3, 1695) was born into a family of small-scale artists from the Meuse region of France, with whom he trained. Probably wishing to transcend the limits inherent in his background, he moved to Rome in 1652 and married the granddaughter of the famous portraitist Ottavio Leoni in 1656. Admitted to the Academy of St. Luke in 1657, his integration into the pontifical city is also evident in his choice to sign "Nicolo Lorenese" and in the Italian names with which he baptizes his own children. By the end of the 1650s, he was already enjoying some success, with several of his drawings being translated into engravings by Jean Baron of Toulouse. From the mid-1660s, his reputation continued to grow, as he produced numerous altar paintings. In this respect, the fact that he was chosen to paint the main chapel in the church of Saint-Nicolas-des-Lorrains shows the prestige he enjoyed among Lorraine residents in Rome. However, his reputation extended beyond this community, as he also painted altarpieces for the churches of Saint-Antoine-des-Portugais and Sainte-Marie-de-la-Victoire. His two half-brothers, Sébastien and Charles Harment, joined his studio to assist him with his numerous commissions. In addition to training his two sons, Ludovico and Giuseppe, François Nicolas de Bar was so active that he attracted apprentices from outside his family circle, such as Pieter Hoffman from Antwerp, who would later become famous for his battle scenes. When he died on January 3, 1695, he bequeathed a large number of paintings to his son-in-law, foreshadowing a major production of easel paintings that is of interest to museums today. Thus, the Musée des Bar-le-Duc acquired his Orphée et Eurydice in 2014 and the Musée du Louvre his Mort de Saphire in 2021.
Bibliography:
- CHONE, Paulette, " François Nicolas de Bar, " Nicolò Lorense " (1632-1695) ", In Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Moyen- Age, Temps modernes, tome 94, n°2. 1982. pp. 995-1017.
- THUILLIER, Jacques, Claude Gellée et les peintres lorrains en Italie au XVIIe siècle,?(cat. exp. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, May-July 1982), Roma De Luca Editore, 1982.
- THUILLIER, Jacques, "Note sur François Nicolas de Bar", in Les fondations nationales dans la Rome pontificale, Actes du colloque de Rome, May 16-19 1978, École Française de Rome, 1981, pp. 541-544.
