TOMASSO II
TOMASSO II
La Bergère des Alpes
Lot Closed
October 19, 03:13 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Jean-Pierre Péquignot
Baume-les-Dames 1765–1807 Naples
La Bergère des Alpes
inscribed on the tombstone lower left: TOMBEAU DU COMTE D'ORESTAN QUIS ES TUE / ADELAIDE SA TENDRE EPOUSE BERGERE DES ALPES
oil on canvas
unframed: 140.3 x 77.8 cm.; 55¼ x 30⅝ in.
framed: 160 x 97.2 cm.; 63 x 38¼ in.
This painting represents a scene from Jean-François Marmontel's play La Bergère des Alpes (The Shepherdess of the Alps), published in 1766 as part of his Contes Moraux (Moral Tales). The story inspired numerous artworks. It recounts the tragic tale of two young French aristocrats: Adelaide and her lover, the Count D'Orestan. In the face of objections to their match from their families, the pair run away together, but the count then dies suddenly. In her grief, Adelaide digs his grave with her bare hands, renounces the world, and thereafter lives as a shepherdess in the mountains, until she reveals her true identity to another nobleman, Fonrose.
The composition of this work shares a number of characteristics with Claude-Joseph Vernet's depiction of the same scene in similar upright format, today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 8316).1