CIRCLE OF MADELEINE BOULLOGNE | VANITAS STILL LIFE WITH BOOKS, SKULLS, MUSIC, AN HOURGLASS, A FRAME, AND OTHER OBJECTS, ALL ON A TABLE

The Art Collection of the First National Bank of Chicago, Chicago 1974, p. 12, no. 307 (as Madeleine de Boullogne);

B. Ebert, Simon und Isaack Luttichuys: Monographie mit kritischem Werkverzeichnis, Berlin and Munich 2009, p. 360, under cat. no. Sim. A7 (as an autograph second version);

C. Salvi, D'après nature. La nature morte en France au XVIIe siècle, Tournai 2000, p. 165 (as an autograph second version);

A. Merle du Bourg, in La nature morte française au XVIIe siècle, E. Coatalem, ed., Dijon 2014, pp. 52, 68.

This dramatically lit vanitas still life relates to a renowned canvas by Madeleine Boullogne, also signed and dated 1674, that is today in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mulhouse.¹ It is probable that the example in Mulhouse is the painting Boullogne exhibited at the Salon of 1704 under the title Pensée de Mort.  While the two works are similar in their overall composition, they differ somewhat in their use of color tone and handling of the brushstrokes.

The motif of a skull set atop a book with the front of a skull reflected in a mirror also appears in an earlier canvas from around 1645-1650 by Simon Luttichuys.²

1. Oil on canvas, 90 by 122 cm., inv. no. D71.2.51. See Merle du Bourg 2014, p. 52, reproduced. 

2. See Ebert 2009, pp. 360-1, cat. no. Sim. A7, reproduced in color p. 125, fig. 71.