Page 24 - Jacques Blanchard - Myth and Allegory
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picture is most likely at least three years intended as part of a decorative scheme.
earlier than Rubens’s, so it is debatable who Richard Beresford has also kindly stated that
inspired whom, if at all, but the compositional in his opinion the painting might be
similarities are remarkable. Both works depict associated with the hôtel Le Barbier.35
the lovers caught in the same vain embrace, Moreover, Beresford pointed out that the
both pictures include the upright figure of Venus and Adonis departing for the Hunt, is
Cupid to allude to the central theme of love consistent in subject matter with another
and its stings, as well as to serve as a formal work which he associates with the hôtel Le
device which emphasises the strong Barbier, a Diana and Endymion, currently in a
intersecting diagonals of the lovers. Rubens’s French private collection.36 The latter
picture was painted in his later career, when picture would appear to have been,
he was settled in Antwerp, so any possibility according to Dézallier d’Argenville’s
that Rubens was inspired by Blanchard’s description, one of the eight ‘upright’
picture, would depend on an engraving after compositions and is no.14, the last on his
it, and at present none exists. descriptive list.37
eee The lack of concrete documentary evidence
aside, on stylistic grounds the painting fits to
Although, the picture’s lack of provenance exactly this moment of the artist’s
prevents it from a definitive identification development during the mid-1630s. It
with the documented decoration of the hôtel should be compared with the Louvre Charité
Le Barbier, a Venus and Adonis does appear there of 1633 in the treatment of both the flesh
mentioned as no. 6 in the list of square pictures and the draperies, and the muscular
forming part of the decoration.34 On stylistic structure of Adonis with his unusually stocky
grounds, the picture ought to be associated figure seems to derive from a model similar
with this lost decoration; there are no other to those figures as seen in the Flagellation. In
works currently known of‘presque carre’ format its lyrical aspects, and sense of romantic
as described by Dézallier d’Argenville which tension, the picture also approaches the
might fit into this cycle. The square format of Nancy Bacchanal of 1636.
the painting and its intended low view point
makes it virtually certain that this too, like eee
the Bravo Disturbing a Sleeping Nymph was
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