Realization: Baugin, Lubin (Pithiviers - Paris (75), July 11, 1663) (Painter)
The dead Christ contemplated by the angels
The dead Christ contemplated by the angels
Production: 1645 - 1650
Area: Painting
Technique(s): Canvas (oil painting)
Dimensions : H. 147 cm ; W. 178 cm
Inventory no.: 78.1.1
Photo credit(s) :
Lombard, Mathieu
Cartel
Lubin Baugin was born in Pithiviers, but spent much of his career in Paris. This surprising painting is considered the artist's masterpiece of religious painting. Undoubtedly intended for a private chapel, Christ mort pleuré par les anges (Dead Christ wept by angels ) completely revisits the iconography of Christ's lamentation, departing considerably from the text of the Gospels. Christ's monumental body is exposed to the viewer, stretched out across the entire width of the painting. His Apollonian body, sensitively modeled, is barely veiled by the shroud on which it rests. Two chubby little angels watch over his remains before the cold stone of the sepulchre. The painting is astonishing for its great plastic economy: in a twilight atmosphere, a cold, mineral backdrop envelops the bodies of the figures, in a subtle cameo of gray, white and beige.
With the elongation of Christ's body and the affected elegance of the angels, Lubin Baugin places himself as one of the continuators of the Mannerist aesthetic of the Fontainebleau school, while at the same time bringing to it a recollected serenity conducive to meditation that he borrows from the great Italian masters: the artist had had the opportunity to spend a long time in Rome between 1630 and 1640, where he was able to discover the classical masterpieces of Carracci and Guido Reni. This Dead Christ, from his mature period, reveals this dual influence at the service of private devotion.
Provenance
Donated to the Musée Municipal de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Deposited with the church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Restitution after claim to the heirs of the donor.
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Collection Madame Pierre Breton.
Purchased by the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans from Madame Pierre Breton with the participation of the French State and the Société des amis des musées d'Orléans, 1978.
School
France
Location
Museum of Fine Arts
2nd floor
Room: France in the Great Century