Dominique Papety (1815–1849) - The Holy Family

Dominique Louis Féréol PAPETY
(Marseille, 1815 – Marseille, 1849)

The Holy Family

Oil on canvas
35 x 27 cm
Around 1840

Exhibition: Marseille Salon under number 764

Dominique Papety was born in Marseille on August 12, 1815. The son of a soap maker, he received his first artistic training in his hometown with the painter Auguste Raymond d'Aubert then entered Cogniet's workshop at the National School of Fine Arts of Paris in 1835. Grand Prix de Rome shortly after in November 1836, he completed his training in Italy, at the Villa Medici, where he worked alongside Ingres, then director (1836-1841). The master's teaching, as well as the study of Antiquity and the Italian masters, taught him the beauty of Greek linearity: "Phidias became my idol again" the artist said in a letter dated September 25, 1839, to his former master. the painter Aubert. Returning to France in 1842, Papety began exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1843. He was present there until 1848. The artist left for Greece in 1846 with his patron friend and art critic François Sabatier, with whom he had made friends in Rome. His wanderings took him as far as Syria and Palestine. It was during this last trip that he contracted the fever which took him away shortly after on his return to Marseille.

This small painting of personal devotion, with an eminently religious subject, is therefore to be compared to its period of Roman production around 1840, where under the leadership of Ingres, Papety worked mainly on biblical subjects.

Museums: Cholet, Reims, Montpellier, Paris (Mus. du Louvre), Marseille, Versailles, New York, Buenos Aires, Avignon, Compiègne, Dijon, Nantes, Montauban, Orléans, London…