CHARLES MELLIN | Double sided sheet of studies after classical sculptures and reliefs

Galerie Nicolas Schwed, 2007

P. Malgouyres, Charles Mellin, un Lorrain entre Rome et Naples, cat. exp., Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, et Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, 2007, pp.224-5, 299, n°D 99 (recto)

Hinged in three corners to window mount. Narrow strip of paper attached along the edge of the sheet, top and right sides. Remains of old hinge, verso, lower right corner. A little light foxing and discolouration throughout, but overall condition good and fresh. Sold unframed.
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This attractive sheet of studies after the antique was described by Philippe Malgouyres as recording sculptural works that the artist would have seen at the Villa Medici, in Rome.  Malgouyres was apparently unaware of the drawings on the verso, but identified the four sculptures of standing prisoners on the recto with three porphyry figures of Dacian captives (fig. 1) and another in white marble, then at the Villa Medici, and now in the Boboli Gardens at the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence.  As Florent Heintz has kindly informed us, other objects recorded in the drawing are also now in the Boboli Gardens: the marble funerary altar of Tiberius Iulius Mnester, shown in Mellin's drawing surmounted by a fourth statue of a Dacian, seems to be the one now surmounted by a statue of Demeter, and the marble base inscribed for M(arcus) Cutius Amemptus, shown on the verso of Mellin's drawing surmounted by a lid carved with an eagle in front, is in the Boboli Gardens, now without  its lid, but surmounted by a statue of a togatus. Mellin is relatively rare as a draughtsman (the catalogue by Malgouyres lists only around one hundred drawings by his hand), but other similar studies after the antique are known.¹

Born in Nancy, Mellin spent his entire career in Italy, where he was known as Carlo Lorenese. He was very successful as a painter, beating Nicolas Poussin and Giovanni Lanfranco to win the commission to decorate the Chapel of the Virgin at the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, in 1631, and in 1636-7 he painted a cycle of 15 frescoes in the Abbey of Monte Cassino, which were destroyed in World War II.  From 1643 until 1647 he worked in Naples, before returning to Rome.  Initially strongly influenced by Simon Vouet, Mellin soon trod his own, distinctive stylistic path.  Although his drawing style is in fact readily recognisable, his graphic works have sometimes been confused with those of Poussin.

^1.  Malgouyres, op. cit., pp. 224-5