Page 27 - Jacques Blanchard - Myth and Allegory
P. 27
A BRAVO DISTURBING A SLEEPING NYMPH.
Circa 1636-1638
Oil on canvas
139 x 108 cm (54 3/4 x 42 1/2 in)
PROVENANCE: Private Collection France; French art Market.
A t present, the specific subject Ronsard’s lyric poetry, or the rediscovered
depicted in this intimate and ancient epic, Aethiopica, sources which, are
charming composition eludes now obscure, but had been very popular in
us. Various possible subjects the late 16th and early 17 th centuries,
have been suggested, all of them recondite respectively.
and more or less plausible, without being
certain.These include Rhea Silvia and Mars;38 Looking at Blanchard’s distinctly close
Tancred and Clorinda;39 and Theseus and composition in respect to its heightened
Ariadne40, narratives which are all, to some sense of colour and overall painterly quality,
degree, credible and relevant within the we can discern a style which is overall very
period, but do not, in iconographic terms, sympathetic to the Venetian, but also
fit our picture exactly. If the picture were compassionate with Flanders. Turning again
connected to a cycle based on either Tasso or to our narrative possibilities, we recall
Oriosto, Blanchard would have been spoiled Rubens’s Mars and Rhea Silvia42 in Vienna.
for inspirational choice by the works, (such Painted at least thirteen years before our
as they survived) of the Second picture, and admittedly sharing only slight
Fontainebleau School artists alone.41 formal similarities, what is interesting is the
However, the picture has no sense of the way both works borrow from the antique.
exquisitely bizarre that often typifies the For example, while Rubens’s Rhea Silvia and
Fontainebleau schools. Equally, Blanchard’s decorative motifs have no known precedent
very personal approach in the work to what in ancient art, his Mars is derived from
is clearly a romantic subject does not evoke figures on 2nd century ‘Hunt’ sarcophagi43,
any contemporary or ancient source, such as which, along with the reliefs on Trajan’s
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