Lot n° 206
Estimation :
30000 - 40000
EUR
French school of the late 16th or early 17th century, entour - Lot 206
French school of the late 16th or early 17th century, entourage of François Quesnel (Edinburgh 1543-1619 Paris)
Portrait of Michel Eyquem (1533-1592), known as "Montaigne", in black doublet, white strawberry and hat
Oil on paper, mounted on canvas
37 x 28.1 cm (canvas), 38.2 x 29.2 cm (lining)
Produced with great psychology, in oil on paper, our unpublished copy of Michel de Montaigne's portrait "with hat" is the oldest known copy of this fascinating effigy of one of the greatest minds of 16th-century Europe.
The author of the "Essais" is depicted in bust form at the end of his life, in a very tight frame. On top of his simple black suit, a fur coat covers his shoulders. The jewel of the Order of Saint-Michel, a small model, which he received between 1571 and 1577, hangs around his neck.
In his book "Portraits à l'essai. Iconographie de Montaigne", Professor Philippe Desan establishes the history of this family of portraits, of which five examples are published, dating, for the oldest, from the mid-seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century: "one gets lost in the history of these paintings, several of which seem to have been produced almost simultaneously at the end of the eighteenth century; each family [descendant of Montaigne: the Ségurs, the Galard-Béarns] claiming the authenticity of its effigy of Montaigne." (p.90)
Each copy brings its share of tradition, oral or written (often unfounded, sometimes even fanciful), on the origin of the portraitsource, which has yet to be identified.
The first mention of a portrait of this kind can be found in the poem Le Voyage de M. *** [Courtois] en Périgord (Paris, sn, 1762). In a dream set to verse, Courtois describes an imagined encounter with the author of Essais, a "Montagne who was precisely as I had seen him in his painting".
"I slept at my ease, When a man appeared to me, And frightened me with his greeting:
Wearing a bad black jacket, He had a beautiful strawberry on his neck, And very little beard on his chin;
The air distracted, but lively & gascon:
Sur son chef étoit noire étoffe
Forming a rounded bonnet, On his lean face applauded;
Je suis, dit-il, ce Philosophe..."
In the course of 1771, Canon Prunis visited the Château de Montaigne, then owned by Jean-François de Ségur-Montaigne (1753-1819), and discovered in an old trunk not only the original manuscript of the "Journal de voyage", but also a copy of the "Essais", known today as the "Bordeaux copy" (Bordeaux, Bibliothèque Municipale, cote S 1238 Rés.
C). Initially, he obtained permission from the Comte de Ségur to take it with him, and sent the precious manuscript to Paris to verify its authenticity. The bookseller Le Jay acquired the text and put it to press. In the newspaper "Annonces, Affiches et Avis divers pour la ville de Bordeaux" of November 12, 1772, a bookshop prospectus announced the subscription of "Voyage de Michel de Montaigne en Italie", and announced that "the true portrait of Montaigne, quite different from that at the head of the London Montaigne, may be found at the head of this work. It will be engraved by M. de Saint-Aubin, of the Académie Royale de Peinture, after the original painted in Rome during Montaigne's stay there.
Rome during Montaigne's stay there, and will be placed at the head of the "Voyage".
The same year, Nicolas Joseph Voyer l'aîné (1746-1805) engraved this portrait, which was included in "L'Histoire de la ville de Bordeaux" by
Don Devienne (1728-1792) (cf. ill.1), his very first publication, even before the "Journal du Voyage", which enabled copies to be made.
The particularities of our copy were discovered following a technical report drawn up by the ArtInLab laboratory (Paris) in 2024.
Our composition is painted on a very fine, cream-colored paper that has been prepared, with an underlying drawing traced with a dry medium, possibly a metal point.
Infrared reflectography and X-rays revealed that the artist's first intention was to depict the model with a much simpler collar, rather than a burr: "A first, more sober form of collar is visible. The realization of the strawberry also led to a slight modification of the fur stole. On the right of the composition, the strawberry was painted over the hat. This hat was indeed present in the artist's first intention. The change in format may not be a repentance on the part of the artist. In fact, the reworking of the composition to restore the missing parts of the paper support also involved repainting the upper part of the hat, and it was probably at this point that s
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