(1616 Paris 1655)
Ecce Homo
Oil on canvas
83,4 x 61 cm
17th century Italian frame
Framed : 108 x 86 cm
Circa : 1642-1645
Provenance: Private collection, Italy
An atypical figure in the studio of Simon Vouet, Eustache Le Sueur worked with him for around a decade starting in 1635, in company with, notably, Pierre Mignard and Charles Le Brun. Working at his master’s side, Le Sueur’s talent as an easel painter became famous, but also the renowned author of decorative schemes, an area that was booming at the time of Mazarin. When he left Vouet’s studio, around 1643-1644, his style evolved rapidly, even if he remained very close to his mentor. In his Mémoire historique des ouvrages d’Eustache Le Sueur, Guillet de Saint Georges explains that, contrary to his contemporaries, he had “never wanted to go to Rome, but was exacting in his studies of the finest works from schools of Italian art that had been brought from there.”
He also executed a certain number of works after drawings by Vouet and under Vouet’s direction, but his search for balance, rigor and simplification developed more and more as he moved away from Vouet’s seductive style. On the other hand, he continued to adapt certain of his master’s compositions, including various depictions of the Virgin and Child and the Holy Family, which he pared down to give more nobility. It was in 1643 that he had Daret engrave the first works to which he signed his name, The Holy Family with a Bird and a Virgin and Child.
In 1645, Le Sueur received his most ambitious commission, a cycle of 22 paintings on the life of Saint Bruno to decorate the cloister of the Charterhouse (monastery) in Paris. Le Sueur devoted three years of his life to this prestigious project, which entered into the Royal collections in 1776 when it was purchased by Louis XVI. This unique, very personal and coherent ensemble was already at the margins of the Parisian art scene. Through it, one can observe his evolution toward uncluttered, serene art. In his Entretiens, Félibien praised this cycle for its “organization and noble, natural expressions of feelings.” The colors he used became brighter, while his fondness for architectural elements and mastery of space and illusionist perspectives was more assertive.
Influenced by the example of Poussin, who lived in Paris from 1640 to 1642, Le Sueur classified himself as belonging to what was called “Parisian Atticism,” a movement characterized by its sobriety and references to Antiquity. The Musée Magnin in Dijon and the Musée Tessé, in Le Mans devoted a well-known exhibition, Eloge de la clarté, un courant artistique au temps de Mazarin, 1640-1650 (1998-1999)to the subject. In it, the sober, elegant art of Le Sueur, La Hyre and Stella can be rediscovered along with their ideal: brightness, order and balance.
At the same time he was working on his cycle of the life of Saint Bruno, Le Sueur was entrusted with the decoration for several town residences, or hôtels particuliers. All of the lessons learned from Vouet resurfaced for the monumental décor of the Hôtel Séguier and the gallery of the Hôtel Bullion, and his success in these undertakings was immense. He repeated his success in 1644 for the Hôtel Lambert, returning in 1649 (at the death of Perrier) for the Décor pour la Chamber des Muses, whose paintings are today in the Musée du Louvre, and also for the Cabinet des Bains, tragically damaged in the fire of 2013. Le Sueur afterwards worked for the Palais du Louvre, in particular for the Appartement des Bains d’Anne d’Autriche and the Chambre de Louis XIV and, while part of the paintings have unfortunately disappeared, they are still documented in magnificent preparatory drawings.
In 1648, Le Sueur actively participated in the creation of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, and from the very beginning of its existence, the excellence of his work played an essential role in this new institute.
Often compared to the Italian primitives, Le Sueur was nicknamed “the French Raphael” after his May of 1649, representing Saint Paul at Ephesus (Musée du Louvre). A singular figure, he was criticized beginning at the end of the 17th century for his palette, his austerity, and the position he took in the great quarrel opposing fans of Poussin to those of Reubens. Praised to the skies by Diderot, Le Sueur fell into oblivion in the 19th century, unjustly said to be an imitator of Raphael, cold, and with no personality.
Our Ecce Homo falls within the aesthetic universe of Le Sueur during the period 1640-1645, when he had begun to distance himself from Vouet’s style to set out on his own path to a sober, highly restrained art, sometimes rightly described as “noble simplicity.” In our composition, we find the brightness and reverence that had become essential to his way of expressing himself. The delicate violet of Christ’s robe is reminiscent of the art of Guido Reni (and particularly his Ecce Homo in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge).
Our never-before published canvas illustrates perfectly Watelet’s description in his Dictionnaire des arts de Peinture, sculpture et gravure: Le Sueur gives “to all these things much reserve and restraint, spreading over them that gentle heat which causes everything to be deeply felt (…) His colors do not cry out like those of the Venetian and Flemish Schools, but captivate: they are exactly what they need to be for the soul to be left in peace, allowing it to fix without distraction on the parts of art that are superior to color,” (Paris, 1792).
The hands of Christ, oddly delicate for a man’s, are very sensual, with large, well-defined nails, characteristics that can be found in numerous paintings by the artist from the same period, as much in religious works like Saint Bruno’s Dream, as in the large group portrait, Meeting with Friends (Musée du Louvre, Inv. 8063). In them, we can observe the same tapered, delicate hands and studied gestures, sometimes contrasting with the rather austere, even dramatic, theme of the work, as in our The Mocking of Christ.
In the same way, the beautiful drapery of the cloak, its heavy yet soft folds sometimes in deep shadow, is also frequent in his canvases of this period. We see it in the earliest canvases of Cycle of the Life of Saint Bruno executed in 1645 but afterwards their facture would evolve (See The Return of Tobias, Musée du Louvre, and The Kidnapping of Tamar, circa 1640, Metropolitan Museum of Art).
Though tightly joined together, Christ’s hands, like his face, show no sign of pain, only his reverence and resilience are the focus here. His eyes, delineated in brown, with long black eyelashes, are downcast, and his slightly open mouth recalls the features of his Judith Handing Over the Head of Holofernes (private collection), of Jesus Carrying His Cross (Musée du Louvre, Inv. 8016), and of the muse on the left in The Birth of Cupid.
To conclude, we would quote the words of Gabriel Rouchès in his monograph on the artist, published in 1923: “If, in a single word, I were to characterize the art of Le Sueur, the epithet that I would choose would be delicate.”
