Noël Coypel

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This copper plate is healthy. It is slightly bumpy in the upper left and lower left. The work is not clean. If and when it is cleaned, some retouches will be removed here and there in the darker colors, around the putti and particularly in the lower right. However, the restorations that have been applied are quite good, and the work could easily be hung in its current state.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The present work is an unusual and powerful representation of Christ at Prayer on the Mount of Olives. It is a reduced version of a painting by Noel Coypel included in the so-called Salon of 1704.  It was not truly a salon, but rather an enormous exhibition of paintings and pastels by members of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, held in the Grande Galerie du Louvre.  There were about 555 works included in the exhibition, and among the artists with the greatest number of paintings were the two oldest members of the Coypel family Noël and Antoine, who submitted 29 and 14 works, respectively.¹  A larger version of the present work was one of several paintings by Noël in the exhibition dealing with the theme of the Passion.² 
In both versions, the artist has taken the unusual step of setting the scene in a celestial rather than a terrestrial environment:  he eliminates the apostles and most of the features of the Mount of Olives and surrounds Christ with clouds and a myriad of angels holding the instruments of the Passion.  They flutter around Christ and support him both physically and emotionally; one angel is crying, wiping the tears away from his eyes.  God the Father sits above, his cloak billowing around him, and his dispassionate expression contrasts with the angels’ distress.  By focusing on these figures and reducing any real description of the locale, Coypel creates a sense of sobriety and gravity, that is characteristic of many of the works he painted   toward the end of his life.  

1.  See  P. Rosenberg in D. Breme and F. Lanoe, 1704 Le Salon, Les Arts et Le Roi, exhibition catalogue Sceaux, France, pp. 9-10.
2.  F. Lanoe, op. cit. p. 132, no. 23, reproduced p. 133.