JACQUES STELLA | Virgin and Child

Possibly anonymous sale, Paris, Me Chariot, 2 April 1803 ("65 x 49 cm").

The painting has a certificate from the specialist of the artist Mr. Sylvain Kerspern dated 12 June 2014. Jacques Stella, an artist of Flemish origin who worked for prestigious patrons in France and Italy, is today appreciated in his own right, having been long overshadowed by the successful career of his contemporary, Nicolas Poussin. Having initially trained in Lyon, Stella lived in Florence from 1616-1621, where he encountered the engraver Jacques Callot. He then moved to Rome, where he remained for ten years and worked in particular for Pope Urban VIII. It was in the Eternal City that he came under the influence of classicism and, more specifically, of the art of Poussin. In 1634, he returned to Lyon, travelling to Paris a year later. The Cardinal de Richelieu introduced him into the court of Louis XIII, who appointed him painter to the king. Possibly sold in 1803[1], our painting dates from the artist's Parisian period (1636-1657), the years of his greatest success[2].
In front of a solid, dark background, the Virgin suckles the Child according to the traditional iconographical model of the Virgo lactans, but here transposed into a secular and familial 17^th-century setting. Jesus is swaddled and the Virgin is dressed in a complex tangle of pink and blue, on a white cloth. On her shoulders she wears an ochre stole, echoing the colour of the material wrapped around the Child. The latter, his fingers on his lips, exchanges a troubled look with His serene-looking Mother.
Stella treated this subject several times but, as far as we are aware, only in France. It is possible that the inspiration for these scenes of motherhood came from watching his infant nephews and nieces during the fairly frequent visits he was able to make to Lyon in the first years following his return from Rome. What is striking in this instance is the bareness of the setting. Jacques Stella, who willingly provided the most traditional Virgin and Child paintings with curtains, fruits, flowers and birds, gradually came to execute this episode as a simple representation of maternity. This painting must be situated within the final decade of the artist's career, perhaps around the same time as the Virgin feeding porridge to the Christ Child[3] (1651) which displays a similar architectural background, recurring throughout his oeuvre, as well as a closely related typology and formal treatment. Later, the artist's niece, Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella, made an engraving after the painting (fig. 1)[4]. In any case, it is in our version of the subject that the artist went furthest in his appropriation of the antique, reconstituted in a familiar and contemporary world. Although the theme is certainly biblical, the mother's affection brings the representation right up to the present as a scene observed in the artist's private life. The Virgin suckling the Child thus appears to be one of Stella's most moving and personal successes, achieved during the twilight of his life.


[1] According to the expert Sylvain Kerspern, our painting may be considered to be the one sold in Paris on 2 April 2003 (same measurements, circa 65 x 49 cm).
[2] Jacques Stella (1596-1657), cat. exh., Lyon, musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, November 2006-February 2007, Toulouse, musée des Augustins, March-June 2007, p. 45.
[3] Jacques Stella, Vierge donnant la bouillie, 1651, huile sur toile, diam. 72 cm, Paris, Galerie Coatalem.
[4] R.-A. Weigert, Inventaire du fonds français. Graveurs du XVII^e siècle, t. II, Paris, Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliothèque nationale, 1954, n°8, p. 80.