Hyanthe and Clymene Offering a Sacrifice to Venus

In Greek mythology, Hyanthe and Clymene are the two daughters of a king of Crete who rescued Francus, the Trojan ancestor of the Franks, when he was shipwrecked. Dubreuil’s painting belonged to a group of about sixty paintings that Henri IV commissioned between 1594 and 1602 for the Château Neuf of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Dubreuil’s paintings in the Petite Galerie of the Louvre, now the Galerie d’Apollon, were destroyed in the fire of 1661, and his decorations at Fontainebleau have also disappeared without trace. From the series of compositions at Saint-Germain-en-Laye six survive while others are known from copies and drawings; and further several tapestries of the history of Diana are known from his designs. In these his manner is based primarily on Primaticcio. Dubreuil forms a link between Primaticcio and the classicism of Poussin in the following century.