SUBLEYRAS, Pierre

This picture is based on the story in the Gospel of St Luke (VII, 36-50) in which Christ was invited to dine with Simon the Pharisee. The painting is directly linked with a large composition at the Louvre in Paris, which Subleyras painted in Rome from about 1755 to 1757 for the refectory of Santa Maria Nuova, a monastery in Asti, Piedmont. This work was chiefly responsible for his fame during the eighteenth century. He made many studies prior to embarking on the picture. Even while working on it he made a number of small versions, including this painting, which should be regarded as a work in its own right. Subleyras attached great importance to the Dresden version; indeed, by presenting it to Frederick Christian of Saxony, the heir to the Elector, he pinned to the work his hopes of a position in Dresden.

The picture depicts the scene of the Duke of Saint Aignan investing Girolamo Vaini, Prince of Cantalupe and Duke of Selci, with the Insignia of a Knight of the Holy Spirit.

Subleyras had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Saint Aignan soon after the latter’s appointment as Ambassador to the Pope in 1731. The Duke commissioned him to paint the present scene, which required the skills of a portraitist who was also thoroughly familiar with the conventions of historical subject painting. There are three complete versions of the composition of which this finished composition sketch is the first.

This painting is a large-size model for the altarpiece executed for the St. Peter’s but transferred to the Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome. This altarpiece is the masterpiece of the artist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Gregor Joseph Werner: Vesperae de Confessoris - Iste confessor

The unknown sitter is probably an engraver.

The sitter is believed to be Giuseppe Baretti.

This self-portrait is painted on the ungrounded reverse of the Studio of the Painter. It was discovered only in 1968 when the old canvas relining was removed. It is almost life-sized, not entirely finished and the composition does not follow any iconographical conventions.

In Italy, Subleyras worked on the decoration of numerous religious buildings. The Feast in the House of Simon was commissioned by the Lateran canons for the refectory of the convent of Asti, near Turin. Inspired by the monumentality and realism of Veronese’s religious paintings, and faithful to the canons of accessibility advocated by Poussin, with his sombre, intense palette, Subleyras succeeded in combining grandeur and familiarity in representing the episode.

This is a highly finished proposal, or modello, for Subleyras’s most important commission: the full-scale design for a mosaic altarpiece for Saint Peter’s in Rome. It depicts Saint Basil the Great (ca. 330–379) celebrating the Mass in the presence of the Emperor Valens, a heretical Arian. Surrounded by priests, Basil receives the wine for consecration. Valens’s required gifts of bread are presented by figures at the left while to the right the emperor swoons, moved by the solemnity of the Mass. The painter seems to have retained the modello for himself. It is recorded in his posthumous inventory, and remains in its original frame.

Having completed the portrait of Pope Benedict XIV in 1741, Subleyras was granted in 1743 the major papal commission for St. Peters Basilica of “Saint Basile Celebrating Mass in front of Emperor Valens.” The canvas, finished in 1747, was briefly displayed in St. Peter’s in Rome in 1748. The work was translated into mosaic, and designated for display not far away from the mosaic after Poussin of The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus. In 1752 the monumental painting was moved to an altar in Santa Maria degli Angeli, where it can still be seen today.

Three works showing the full composition are usually accepted as autograph: a modello in the Mus�e du Louvre, Paris; another in the State Hermitage, St. Petersburg; and one in the Metropolitan. The latter picture is probably the one kept by the artist and reproduced in his painting The Atelier (now in the Akademie, Vienna). The Atelier shows the original “Marata” frame, which is still on the present work, although enlarged and transformed in the nineteenth century.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Gregor Joseph Werner: Vesperae de Confessoris - Iste confessor

This is a highly finished proposal, or modello, for Subleyras’s most important commission: the full-scale design for a mosaic altarpiece for Saint Peter’s in Rome. It depicts Saint Basil the Great (ca. 330–379) celebrating the Mass in the presence of the Emperor Valens, a heretical Arian. Surrounded by priests, Basil receives the wine for consecration. Valens’s required gifts of bread are presented by figures at the left while to the right the emperor swoons, moved by the solemnity of the Mass. The painter seems to have retained the modello for himself. It is recorded in his posthumous inventory, and remains in its original frame.

Having completed the portrait of Pope Benedict XIV in 1741, Subleyras was granted in 1743 the major papal commission for St. Peters Basilica of “Saint Basile Celebrating Mass in front of Emperor Valens.” The canvas, finished in 1747, was briefly displayed in St. Peter’s in Rome in 1748. The work was translated into mosaic, and designated for display not far away from the mosaic after Poussin of The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus. In 1752 the monumental painting was moved to an altar in Santa Maria degli Angeli, where it can still be seen today.

Three works showing the full composition are usually accepted as autograph: a modello in the Mus�e du Louvre, Paris; another in the State Hermitage, St. Petersburg; and one in the Metropolitan. The latter picture is probably the one kept by the artist and reproduced in his painting The Atelier (now in the Akademie, Vienna). The Atelier shows the original “Marata” frame, which is still on the present work, although enlarged and transformed in the nineteenth century.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Gregor Joseph Werner: Vesperae de Confessoris - Iste confessor

The Pack Saddle is the tale of a suspicious husband who believes himself a cuckold. To protect his wife’s chastity he painted an image of an ass over her pudenda. While he is away, his friend, another artist, makes love to her and erases the image. Before doing so, however, he had carefully copied it onto a piece of paper seen lying on the floor. The lover then repainted the image, but added a “pack saddle” (hence the title of the tale by la Fontaine). The husband, on returning, notes the change and the consequent proof of his wife’s adultery. A variant of the painting exists in the Hermitage.

The painting represents the painter’s studio in Rome in which he has depicted himself three times. On the bottom left in the foreground, he sits on a low stool and holds up a second self-portrait showing him as a young man. The figure shown from back at the easel is also the painter. Hung on the walls and supported on easels there are twenty-five paintings interspersed with small-scale plaster casts of significant artworks on pedestals and pieces of furniture.

A fourth self-portrait was discovered in 1968 on the reverse of the canvas.

The subject is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Knowing her son was destined to die if he went to fight in the Trojan war, Thethis, a sea nymph, disguised Achilles as a woman and entrusted him to King Lycomedes, in whose palace on the isle of Scyros he lived among the king’s daughters. Odysseus and other Greek chieftains were sent to fetch Achilles. They cunningly laid a heap of gifts before the girls - jewellery, clothes and other finery, but among them a sword, spear and shield. When a trumpet was sounded, Achilles instinctively snatched up the weapons and thus betrayed his identity.

Pierre Subleyras was one of the most important French portraitists and painters of religious compositions in the first half of the 18th century. He moved to Italy in 1728 and stayed in Rome for the remainder of his life. His sober and restrained classicism was a harbinger of later Roman painting and the artist filled innumerable commissions for history and religious paintings, as well as portraits and genre paintings.