PIERRE SUBLEYRAS (Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, 1699 -... Lot 45

PIERRE SUBLEYRAS (Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, 1699 - Rome, 1749) Presumed portrait of François Jacquier (1717-1788). Inscription on the back, on the stretcher (probably a retranscription from an inscription on the original canvas): "P. Subleyras . pinx. Romae . an . 1738". Height 45 cm, width 35 cm. (Lifts and small missing, faded). Frame : Louis XVI period Provenance : château de l'Allier. A 1738 presumed portrait of François Jacquier by Pierre Subleyras. Canvas marked "P. Subleyras pinx. Rome en 1738" on the back. Among the great French painters born around 1700 (Boucher, Chardin, Natoire, Van Loo ?), Subleyras is the one who had the most atypical career since he spent only two years of his life in Paris. Originally from Provence, trained in Toulouse, he went to Rome after winning the Grand Prix in 1727, a city he never left, and where he led his career following the example of Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorrain, a century before him. In order to obtain commissions for altarpieces or other large formats destined for convents, Subleyras maintained a great sociability with church people. This is why his corpus includes many portraits of ecclesiastics: - Portrait of Cardinal Silvio Valenti-Gonzaga, ca. 1740, Rome, Capitoline Picture Gallery, - Portrait of Abbot Giovanni Felice Ramelli, Turin, Galleria Sabauda, - Portrait of Abbot Tacchetti, idem, - Portrait of Cardinal Benedetto Odescalchi, Ponce, Museo de arte, - Dom Cesare Benvenuti, Paris, Musée du Louvre, until fixing the features of the highest of them, Pope Benedict XIV (Chantilly, Musée Condé, Versailles, Musée du Château and New York, Metropolitan Museum). Like ours, they are characterized by a realistic description of the face, a psychological analysis of its character and a great empathy towards the model. Let us also compare our painting with the "Portrait of Joseph Vernet" by Subleyras (Amiens museum), of a similar date, around 1739. We thank Mr Nicolas Lesur, who is preparing the catalogue raisonné of the artist, for having confirmed the attribution of this painting after a visual examination in April 2021. He suggested that the model could be the Minimus Father François Jacquier (1717-1788), a renowned mathematician and linguist, author of commentaries on Newtonian physics, in the tradition of scientific research proper to the Minimus order and more particularly to the Roman institution of the Trinité-des-Monts. The known portraits of the latter, much later, present a certain resemblance (by Laurent Pécheux, private collection, around 1765; by the same, in profile, Rome Pieux établissements de la France à Rome et à Lorette; Louis-Gabriel Blanchet, Nantes museum, 1772; Angelica Kaufmann, Bregenz, 1786).