TEFAF Maastricht 2020

Recent studies on François Perrier, who worked in both France and Rome, have brought new focus to this understudied master, only rediscovered as late as the 1960s. Perrier was born in 1594 in Pontarlier, in the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region of France, where he probably was taught to draw by his father, a goldsmith. Between 1624 and 1628 he undertook his first stay in Rome, where he was a pupil of Lanfranco and assisted with the frescoes in the dome of Sant’Andrea della Valle. As evidenced by his etching of the Last Communion of Saint Jerome painted by Agostino Carracci for the Certosa in Bologna, it is clear that Perrier was well-acquainted with accomplishments of the Emilian school of painting, and in fact, a number of works by the artist have at one time or the other been attributed to the Carracci. Indeed, it seems quite likely that the painter passed through Bologna on his way to or from Rome, either on his first or second trip to the city, though unfortunately there is no evidence of this. After his early sojourn in Rome, Perrier returned to France. In Lyon he undertook paintings in Chartreux, while in Paris he became the principal collaborator of Simon Vouet on a number of important projects, including works in the château of Chilly, as well as being among the first masters of Charles Le Brun. Perrier returned to Rome in 1635 and remained in the papal city for a decade, becoming a leading figure during a crucial period of change. Around this time, artists variously embraced an astonishing range of styles; we witness the last embers of Caravaggio’s naturalism, the grand and monumental Baroque, and the courtly classicism of the French painters, with Poussin at the fore, but alongside him painters like Sebastien Bourdon and, indeed, Perrier. The artist spent the last years of his life in Paris, where he became one of the most important figures on the art scene, directing the French taste in the early years of Louis XIV’s reign towards the distinctive classicism which defines art at the court of the Sun King. Two years before his death in January 1648, Perrier became one of the founding members of the Académie Royale de Peinture.

The present painting can be dated to the artist’s second Roman period. It depicts the forge of the Roman god Vulcan (Hephaestus for the Greeks, though there is a subtle difference between the two divine personalities), in which we see the Cyclops, intent on forging magnificent weapons and objects fit for the gods. The work was first published by Erich Schleier in 1972 with an attribution to François Perrier, thanks to a suggestion by Federico Zeri, who knew a photograph of the work in the Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale (E29943), where it was labeled as “scuola romana del XVII secolo.” Schleier also noted the provenance of the painting in the Spada collection, which in all probability had also been reported to him by Zeri, who knew the collections of Cardinal Spada well. The painting is made up of five central vertical panels with two further horizontal panels set above and below, which suggests that the work was created as a wall decoration, probably enclosed in stucco, for one of the rooms of Palazzo Spada, where Perrier’s activity is documented.

Schleier correctly related the painting to a fresco of Venus in the Forge of Vulcan (fig. 1) in the Palazzo Peretti-Almagià in Rome and to a drawing showing the Siege of Rhodes now in the Louvre. Similar elements appear in both the present panel and the fresco, for example, the vertical architectural element just right of center that separates the forge from the background. Yet while in the fresco the landscape is marked by hills and bushes, in the panel there is instead a steep rock formation, a signature element of the artist. Schleier proposed a date for the work around 1640, a hypothesis that can be confirmed by documented payments to the artist made between 1640 and 1642. In his 2001 monograph on the painter, A. L. Clark created some confusion around the matter, asserting that Perrier was recompensed for the work around 1636. More recently, Alessandro Brogi (2018) clarified and reaffirmed the date originally proposed by Schleier.

Several fixed points in the chronology of Perrier’s vital second Roman period (1635–1645) are known. Between 1635 and 1638, he executed the Death of Cicero for the Giustiniani today at Bad Homburg; in 1639 he painted Olindo and Sofronia for the maréchal d’Estrées (today in Reims, Musée Saint-Denis); around 1640 he created the panel presented here; and between 1644 and 1645 payments were made for frescoes in the Peretti gallery. To the same years we may also date the frescoes of scenes from the life of Saint Dominic in the cloister of the convent of San Biagio in Tivoli, the altarpiece showing the Miracle of the Alms of Santa Galla in Ostra, and the Baptism of Christ later traced in the Trentino. In these works, traces of the artist’s close collaboration with Simon Vouet in Paris are no longer in evidence but have been replaced instead by a mixture of heterogeneous elements, such as the monumental and pictorially rich composition, color effects reminiscent of the Venetians of previous eras, a strong classicism of form enriched by the observation of real antique works, and vibrant luminism—all of these elements can be found in the Forge. The best comparisons for the work are perhaps offered by the Beheading of the Baptist in Kedleston Hall (Derbyshire, fig. 2), the Stoning of Santo Stefano (ex-Chigi collection, now in private collection), and by Polyphemus and Galatea from the Kress collection now in the museum at Bucknell (fig. 3).

Perrier is a figure of great importance within the Parisian and French “Atticist” ambient, yet he nonetheless approached the trend with great independence, “maintaining a sort of foreign, Italian accent, and is thus a unique figure in that fervent context.”

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[1] One example is the Polyphemus and Galatea in the Kress collection, now at Bucknell University Art Gallery in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, attributed to Annibale and restituted to Perrier by Longhi.
[2] See A. Brogi, François…cit., p. 154.
[3] During these years, a number of collections of engravings of important antiquities were produced, inlcuding the Galleria Giustiniana coordinated by Joachim von Sandrart (1636-1637), the Segmenta (1638) and the Icones.