FABRE, François-Xavier

Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) was an Italian tragic poet whose predominant theme was the overthrow of tyranny.

To glorify the personality of this writer of tragedies, Fabre has clearly added to the faithfulness of the portrait a heroic tone, evident in the facial expression and the pose of the raised arm over which the brown mantle is slung all’antica.

Beyond its value as a historical document, the work is also a striking example of the more severely classicistic current which emerged from the school of David, of whom Fabre was a pupil and close follower.

The painting is signed and dated in the lower right corner, “F. X. Fabre Florentia 1793”, and on the reverse bears a famous sonnet written by the poet, dated 18 August 1794.

Fabre was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David in Paris, but spent much of his career in Italy: from 1787 in Rome and then from 1793 in Florence, where he was particularly connected with the English expatriate community. He specialised in half-length society portraits; their crisp design and minute attention to detail were largely inspired by David’s paintings. He gradually produced a wider range of works, painting history pictures and landscapes, and was also active as a dealer, printmaker and enthusiastic collector. It is, above all, for his collection rather than his paintings that he is now best known; it is housed in the Mus�e Fabre in his native Montpellier and includes a number of important sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian paintings, as well as a wide selection of the artist’s own work.

Fabre returned briefly to Paris (1809-10) and this intense and sensitive portrait of a fashionably dressed young man is dated to the first year of this visit. It bears a pencil inscription on the unpainted edge of the canvas: M Camille, which is presumably a reference to the as yet unknown sitter. His dishevelled hair is arranged in the so-called ‘a la Titus’ antique style which was then in vogue.

This is the companion piece to the portrait of Vittorio Alfieri, perhaps painted at a later date, but also has a sonnet composed by the poet on its reverse side.

Louise of Stolberg, Countess d’Albany (1752-1824), was a prominent figure in late eighteenth-century Florence, not only and not so much because of her well-known relationship with Vittorio Alfieri, but above all because of the fervent intellectual activity she sustained in her salon, which was frequented by numerous French artists whose cultural tendencies led to the decisive introduction into Florence of neoclassical ideas.