PRUD'HON, Pierre-Paul

A nearly identical version of this painting is in the collection of the Mus�e des Beaux-Arts de Dijon.

This painting was commissioned for Metz Cathedral. Said at the time to have been painted to console the artist in his grief at the suicide of his mistress and pupil Constance Mayer (1775-1821), the sincerity of this work, with its lights and shadows playing over Christ’s twisted body and averted face, is beyond doubt.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 48 minutes):

Johann Sebastian Bach: Easter Oratorio, BWV 249

This composition, executed with a young female pupil, Marie-Constance Mayer, was acquired by Prince Nikolai Yusupov, a Russian statesman and diplomat who lived in Paris from 1803 to 1810. A connoisseur of the arts, Yusupov acquired paintings for the Hermitage during Catherine II’s reign and later managed the affairs of the museum.

Prud’hon achieved a sensational success with this painting commissioned for the Palais de Justice, Paris (and exchanged with the City of Paris in 1826). The success was probably due mainly to the contents of the painting. Prud’hon himself supplied an account of the contents:“Under the dark veil of the night, in a wild and remote place, the greedy criminal murders his victim, snatches his gold and looks to make sure there is no sign of life to betray his fearful deed. He does not see that Nemesis, that terrible aid to justice, is pursuing him, and is about to seize him and deliver him up to its unyielding assistant.”

Studies of nudes were usually undertaken during an artists education or served as the basis of paintings. This was not the case with Prud’hon: even as a mature artist he drew from life without seeking to exploit the work further in any way. His model here reveals her back in a classical pose. The idealized beauty of the body - inspired by ancient sculpture - is formed by a flickering pattern of light and shade with soft transitional areas. The sensuousness of the depiction is further enhanced by a sfumato technique reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci.

Catherine Noëlle Worl�e was a well known Parisian courtesan who in 1798 attracted the attention of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-P�rigord (1754–1838), France’s powerful minister of Foreign Affairs. Upon learning about the liaison in 1802, Napoleon forced the minister to marry her.

Prud’hon painted this allegorical picture shortly after the birth of the son of Napoleon and Marie-Louise on 20 March 1811.

From 1798 to 1802, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck (1761-1825) was the envoy of the Batavian Republic (as the Netherlands was then known) in Paris. However, Prud’hon did not portray him as a diplomat but as the head of a family, with his wife Catharina Nahuys, his twelve-year-old daughter Catharina and his eight-year-old son Gerrit. Prud’hon exhibited this painting at the Salon in Paris, with the title R�union de famille.

Prud’hon started to paint in a style that was entirely rooted in the 18th century. His subjects were taken from Antiquity, but sfumato and grace, the gentle folds of cloth and the idealized little faces of his girlish fairies show him to be one of the last elegiac representatives of the Rococo. We encounter him only rarely as a Neoclassical painter of the linear style, and if so, the mood of the end of the Rococo period is very evident. This is clear in the full-figure portrait of The Empress Josephine, in which the late 18th-century love of nature is still having its effect. The meditative gaze that the Empress is directing on to an antique urn touched the central nerve of the time.