Charles-Joseph Natoire

A. Chariatte (L.88a)

S. Caviglia-Brunel, Charles-Joseph Natoire 1700-1777, Paris 2012, pp. 174-5, no. D.12, reproduced

Overall condition reasonably good. Laid down on an 18th-century backing sheet. Paper slightly faded, with narrow line of slight discolouration from edge of former mount around the edge of huge sheet on all four sides. Chalk is, however, still good, fresh and strong. Framed in an ornate antique gold frame. Framed size: 567 x 491 mm; 22 3/8 x 19 3/8 in.
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This grand figure study must date from Natoire's early period of study in Rome, circa 1723-28, during which he absorbed so much from the great works of art, ancient and modern, with which he was surrounded during those years.  Though he returned to Paris for some time, Natoire's heart remained in Rome, and when he was offered the position of Director of the highly influential French Academy in Rome, he jumped at the chance, holding this key position from 1751 until 1775.  There, he played an influential role in forming more than one generation of the best artists France could produce who, having won the coveted Prix de Rome, were sent to the Eternal City to learn from the works that they would encounter there.  

Just as his later students would learn by copying the works of the great masters, so Natoire here copies a figure on the left of a sculptural relief by Angelo de’ Rossi on the tomb of Alexander VIII in the Basilica of St. Peter’s.  A very similar drawing, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, copies another figure from the same relief.  In a classic example of French academic practice, Natoire then adopted and adapted the figure from the earlier sculpture, and included him, with some differences, as a servant towards the right of his painting of The Feast of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nîmes (fig. 1).¹

Though the pose of the figures in the drawing and the painting are essentially the same, in the painting Natoire replaced the two birds on the tray with fruit, and changed the drapery.  The painting is part of the trilogy of the Tenture de l’Histoire de Marc-Antoine, which dates from 1741-57 and later served as a model for the Gobelins tapestry manufactory, together with works on the same theme by Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), Jean Restout (1692-1768), Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), Jean-François de Troy (1679-1752) and François Boucher (1703-1770)

^1. Nimes, Musée des Beaux-Arts; see Cavilglia-Brunel, op. cit., no. P.230.