François Le Moyne Paris 1688 - 1737

Rotterdam, Kunsthal, European Master Drawings Unveiled, 2002, pp. 246-7, cat. no. 112, reproduced

Sold wooden gilded frame. Laid down on 19th Century mount. Drawn on a rough paper, which has some small, dark spots: they are inherent to the paper, rather than being later damage. The condition seems fine, and the chalks are strong.
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The various studies can all be related to Le Moyne's painting The Adoration of the Shepherds, now hanging in the parish church of Novalesa in Northern Italy (fig. 1).  The young woman becomes the Madonna, dressed more modestly, and the arms are those of the figures in the foreground.  The altarpiece, which is signed and dated 1721, was recorded in the church of Saint Roch in Paris in 1778 but was later removed and eventually sent by Napoleon, with a group of other paintings, as a gift to the monastery of Mont Cenis in gratitude for the monks' kindness to French soldiers when they crossed the mountain pass in 1790.  In 1855 the paintings were taken down the valley to Novalesa.  Jean-Luc Bordeaux considers the altapiece 'a cornerstone in Le Moyne's oeuvre'.  Several other drawings related to this important work are known.¹

1. Jean-Luc Bordeaux, François Le Moyne and his Generation, Neuilly-dur-Seine 1984, p. 85, cat. no. P29, reproduced fig. 25, and pp. 149-150, cat. nos. D39-41, reproduced figs.167-169