Offered by Galerie FC Paris
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Oil on canvas
Presented in its beautiful frame of the XVIIth century, model said with flowered corners, in carved wood with its original gilding.
Total dimensions : 100 x 85 cm. The canvas : 82 x 65,5 cm
This rare and elegant portrait represents a young prince in armor (we continue our research to identify the model.)
The painter portrayed him on a blue sky background, in profile with his head turned to his left. He wears an imposing wig, particularly long and full, which allows us to date this painting to the end of the 17th century.
The look in the blue eyes, lively and determined; the fleshy lips and at the same time sensual, make this work a rare example of the art of the French portrait under Louis XIV by its pictorial quality and the beauty of the character.
Note that the flowery spandrels on a gold background are original!
Joseph VIVIEN, French painter (Lyon 1657 - Bonn 1734).
From 1672, he was a pupil of Bonnemer in Paris and evolved in the entourage of Le Brun. Although he executed a few religious paintings (now lost), he specialized in portraits, mostly in pastel, and as such was admitted to the Academy: Portrait of Girardon and Portrait of Robert de Cotte (1698-99, Louvre). From then on, he devoted much of his activity to the courts of Cologne and Bavaria (numerous portraits of princes preserved in Munich: Alte Pin., Residence, Schleissheim). His oil paintings are rare, the most important being the allegory of the Reunion of Max-Emmanuel of Bavaria with his family (1715-1733, Munich, Alte Pin.). His official portraits, with their sharp and somewhat monotonous features, show a certain stiffness, which disappears in the effigies of characters of lesser rank (Fenelon, 1713, Versailles; Samuel Bernard, 1699, Musée de Rouen; probably his masterpiece) or of artists (Self-portrait, 1730, Munich, Alte Pin.; 1699, Uffizi; Portrait of a painter, 1698, Louvre; Hardouin-Mansart, Hermitage). Together with Rosalba Carriera, Vivien established the fashion for pastel portraits, which were to be very successful throughout the century.
