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Premium Pierre MIGNARD (Troyes, 1612 - Paris, 1695)
Saint Catherine …
See original version (French)
Pierre MIGNARD (Troyes, 1612 - Paris, 1695)
Saint Catherine …
See original version (French)
Lot no. 24
Description
Pierre MIGNARD (Troyes, 1612 - Paris, 1695)
Saint Catherine of Alexandria
Oil on canvas
Inscribed 'Constantin Pujade' in pencil on verso on the top bar of the stretcher frame
In a carved and gilded oak frame, French work of the Louis XVI period
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, oil on canvas, by P. Mignard
28.94 x 23.46 in.
73.5 x 59.6 cm
Provenance: Anonymous sale; Toulouse, Marambat de Malafosse, 18 October 2023, no. 197 (as 19th-century French school);
Acquired at this sale by the current owner
Raising her eyes to heaven, Saint Catherine holds the palm of her martyrdom and leans on the wheel, the instrument of her torture. Having spent more than twenty years in Italy, Troyes-born painter Pierre Mignard remained deeply influenced by the Bolognese masters, and more particularly by the work of the Dominiquin and Guido Reni1. The style of this work is reminiscent of the saints painted by these artists, who were particularly popular with the French public in the mid-seventeenth century. The Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun sale catalogue mentions a 'Sainte-Catherine, de grandeur naturelle, vue en buste. Tableau dans le style du Dominicain' (sale from 11 April to 8 May 1791, no. 189, height: 26 inches; width, 21 inches), which could be our painting. Another Saint Catherine by Pierre Mignard is mentioned in the collections of the canon and provost of the Abbey of Saint-Martin in Tours, J.B. Guyot, whose sale was organised on 8 March 1809: "Bust of Saint Catherine, of natural size, with her head turned almost to the front, looking up to heaven, wearing a religious expression, holding the martyr's palm in her right hand" (lot 151, height: 27 inches; width, 22 inches). The artist's after-death inventory also mentions a study of Saint Catherine: "Item unne esbauche d'unne Ste Chaterine de quatre pieds et demie sur trois et demy no 224 (en fait 225) prisé 800 livres tournois", possibly preparatory to our painting2. Another version of our painting in a similar format, from the collections of Louis La Caze, is in the collections of the Musée d'Art, d'Archéologie et de Sciences naturelles de Troyes (MAH.D.872.7). It is therefore difficult to confirm that the sources actually mention our painting and not the one in Troyes.
In composing Saint Catherine, the painter may have been inspired by the features of his beloved daughter Catherine-Marguerite Mignard (1652-1742), Countess of Feuquières, of whom he painted several portraits3.
1. The sources also make several references to copies made after Bolognese painters active at the beginning of the 17th century. Among the works he left to Monsieur Du Fresnoy in his will, drawn up in Rome on 22 October 1653, we find: "touttes les testes que j'ay desseignee au pastels d'apres le Guide", see Chiara Parisi and Giuseppe Scalia, "Testament scellé de Pierre Mignard", under the direction of Jean-Claude Boyer, Pierre Mignard "le Romain", proceedings of the symposium organised at the Musée du Louvre by the cultural department on 29 September 1995, Paris, 1997, p. 30.
2. Liasse 410 of the Caillet study (LXXV), 5 September 1695, see Antoine Schnapper, "Etat des tableaux de la communauté de feu monsieur Mignard et de madame sa veuve", under the dir. of Jean-Claude Boyer, Pierre Mignard "le Romain", proceedings of the colloquium organised at the Musée du Louvre by the cultural service on 29 September 1995, Paris, 1997, p. 234.
3. Take, for example, the portrait of the latter holding the painted portrait of her father in the Musée des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, inv. MV3677.
Pierre MIGNARD (Troyes, 1612 - Paris, 1695)
73.5 x 59.6 cm
See original version (French)
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