NICOLAS REGNIER (1588 - 1667) PORTRAIT D'une SYBILLE Canvas 57... Lot 7

NICOLAS REGNIER (1588 - 1667) PORTRAIT D'une SYBILLE Canvas 57 x 50 cm The figure of Nicolas Regnier has recently been rehabilitated thanks to the publication of the monograph published in 2007 ( A. Lemoine, Nicolas Regnier, Arthena, Paris 2007) and the exhibition in Nantes in 2017 ( Nicolas Regnier ( v.1588 -1667). L'homme libre", Nantes, Musée des Beaux Arts, 1 December 2017 - 11 March 2018). Flemish by birth, French-speaking, Regnier was a pupil of Abraham Janssens in Antwerp, stayed in Rome where he assimilated the Caravaggesque lesson of Bartolomeo Manfredi, imbued with a broader conception of "realism", before becoming the protégé of Farnese in Parma and ending his career as one of the most fashionable artists in Venice. Our painting belongs to this Venetian period of the painter. Regnier arrived in the city of the Doges in 1626 and never left the Lagoon, where he died in 1667. As soon as he arrived, he will easily find his place, his relations intensify, commissions flourish and above all his status changes, he becomes "salaried painter of the Republic" according to Malvasia's definition. He successfully adjusted the language of Nicolas REGNIER, a Phrygian Caravaggesque Sibyl to Venetian taste, favouring sensuality, theatricality and decorative richness as in the series of Allegories, signed and dated 1626, painted for the Court of Savoy and kept in the Royal Palace of Turin. . The melancholy atmosphere of Roman canvases disappeared in Venice, giving way to a more baroque, theatrical, sophisticated and worldly world. During the years 1630-1640, the classical orientation of Regnier's work asserts itself and references to Guido Reni dominate Caravaggio's . Our canvas bears witness to this adapted taste, closer to the Bolognese who came to stay in Venice like Desubleo, his half-brother, or Cagnacci. The figure of the Sibyl, a pagan prophetess announcing the coming of the Saviour, is treated her