Old Master and British Works on Paper
Old Master and British Works on Paper
Venus disarming Cupid
Lot Closed
July 6, 01:03 PM GMT
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris
Venus disarming Cupid
Black chalk;
inscribed by the Abbé de Saint-Non in black chalk, lower right: Paul Veronese / Galerie Colonne.
233 by 193 mm
Fragonard spent five years in Italy, from 1756 until 1761. His first years were as a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome, but in the spring of 1760 he met the Abbé de Saint-Non, whose enthusiastic patronage allowed him to travel extensively throughout the country. The Abbé simply asked Fragonard to record the most important works of art that he encountered. The result is an extraordinary group of three hundred copies after old master paintings and some sculptures, in addition to a number of views of famous sites.1 On his return to Paris, Saint-Non reproduced many of the drawings as a series of aquatints which, although the project was never realized, were probably intended to illustrate a published journal of his travels.
Saint-Non's inscription, located in the lower right corner of the present work, correctly identifies both the artist and previous location of the painting, as Paolo Veronese and the Palazzo Colonna. The painting subsequently left the Colonna collection in the late 18th or early 19th century and is today in a private collection.2
1. For an account and catalogue of Fragonard's work for the Abbé de Saint-Non, see P. Rosenberg, with B. Brejon de Lavergnée, Saint-Non.Fragonard. Panopticon Italiano. Un diario di viaggio ritrovato, 1759-1761, Rome 1986
2. See T. Pignatti, Veronese, Venice 1976, vol. 1, p. 150, no. 255, vol. 2, reproduced fig. 590