Workshop of Philippe de Champaigne

Anonymous sale, Marseilles, Leclere, 29 March 2019, lot 29 (as Philippe de Champaigne), for €57,200.

This painting is a detail taken from Philippe de Champaigne's The Annunciation completed for the congregation of the Noviciat des Jésuites on the rue du Pot-de-Fer in Paris in 1636 and now preserved in the collegiate church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montrésor in Montrésor, France. When sold in 2019 reference was made of the appearance of the work in Jose Goncalves's online catalogue raisonné, who suggested that it was a fragment of a lost painting by the artist in full.² However, it more likely that this is a repetition undertaken by the artist's workshop. Frédérique Lanoë has tentatively suggested that the painting might have been the work of Philippe's nephew Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne (1631–1681), who joined his uncle in Paris and became his assistant and pupil in 1642.³ It is likely that the artist's growing workshop of assistants and students would have undertaken repetitions of details taken from such large commissions which could be used in other compositions. The same head was used two years later in reverse for de Champaigne's Dream of Saint Joseph painted in 1638 and now in the collection of the National Gallery in London.⁴

^1 B. Dorival, Philippe de Champaigne 1602–1674, Paris 1976, p. 19, no. 21, reproduced p. 401.

² Jose Goncalves has catalogued the painting as by Philippe de Champaigne in full on this online catalogue raisonné under no. M10 : http://www.josegoncalves.fr/tronc/PdC-catalogue-2013-fusionn%C3%A9.pdf

³ Private correspondence with the department.

⁴ Dorival 1976 pp. 21–22, no. 29, reproduced p. 403.