Acquisition of a painting by Charles Le Brun

A rediscovery joins the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans thanks to the patronage of the Fondation de Luxembourg. This remarkable copper composition has been returned to Charles Le Brun by Nicolas Milovanovic and Philippe Champy, adding to a collection already recognized as one of France's richest in ^17th-century French painting, alongside works by the Le Nain brothers, Laurent La Hyre, Lubin Baugin, Michel Corneille, Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne and Sébastien Bourdon. Of exceptional quality and in perfect condition, this copper painting dates from the early years of the artist, then a pupil of Simon Vouet, before his trip to Rome (1642-1645). It can be compared with a larger canvas composition in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. The painful body of Christ evokes the devotion to kenosis, i.e. the visible marks of death on the body of Christ, which was very much in vogue at the time in the entourage of Chancellor Séguier, the first patron of the young Charles Le Brun.