Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are pleased to offer for sale this fine oil on canvas by the artist Giuditta Silvestri after a portion of the oil self-portrait by Madame Elisabeth Vigee le Brun, the eminent French portraitist. The oil is unsigned to the front, but has been signed and inscribed in Italian to the back of the canvas and dated. It states "Giuditta Silvestri diprise dall'originale a Firenze l'anno 1870", the translation of which reads - Giuditta Silvestri painted from the original in Florence in the year 1870. The portrait has been executed extremely well and is a very good likeness to the original, which was painted in 1790. It depicts Madame le Brun seated at her easel, brush in her right hand, palette and brushes in her left, in the process of painting a portrait of Marie Antoinette.

Giuditta Silvestri is a bit of a mystery, having drawn a blank on the usual auction sites for other works by her, we found a reference to her in the Florence Gazette of October 1842. It stated that in the Sala Maggiore of the Academy of Fine Arts, there were two oil paintings of frescoes by Razzi, signed Giuditta Silvestri. What we do not know is whether she was studying or had studied at the Academy, prior to the exhibition. We did find several other painters by the name of Silvestri and one of them, who was an architect and painter called Giovanni Battista Silvestri 1796-1873, also lived in Florence. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and moved to Rome, where he became a Member of the Academy of San Luca. He may have been her brother or a relative.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842), also known as Madame Lebrun or Madame Le Brun, was a prominent French portrait painter of the late eighteenth century.

Her artistic style is generally considered part of the aftermath of Rococo with elements of an adopted Neoclassical style. Her subject matter and color palette can be classified as Rococo, but her style is aligned with the emergence of Neoclassicism. Vigée Le Brun created a name for herself in Ancien Regime society by serving as the portrait painter to Marie Antoinette. She enjoyed the patronage of European aristocrats, actors, and writers, and was elected to art academies in ten cities.

Vigée Le Brun created some 660 portraits and 200 landscapes. In addition to many works in private collections, her paintings are owned by major museums, such as the Louvre, Hermitage Museum, National Gallery in London, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and many other collections in continental Europe and the United States.

The original is owned by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, as part of their collection of self-portraits of artists, but was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an exhibition in 2016. We have found a detail about the portrait and the reason for it execution, which is quite interesting and which we will copy below:

In Florence, Vigée Le Brun admired the famous collection of artists’ self-portraits in the Corridoio Vasariano at the Uffizi. Asked to add her own image, she later wrote: “I painted myself with a palette in hand, in front of a canvas on which I am drawing the queen in white chalk.” Both her subject and her elegant black silk gown were intended to evoke the power and prestige of her position as a painter to the king of France. The scarlet sash adds a bold touch.

A further interesting snippet of information is that the Earl of Bristol saw the self-portrait when in Florence and commissioned Madame Le Brun to paint a copy of it for him and also to paint his portrait. This copy hangs in Ickworth House, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, now in the care of the National Trust. The previous owners of the portrait put a note on the back of the painting saying 'This is a copy of part of a large painting we saw in Ickworth House, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk'. Actually, this is not a copy of that painting, but of the original one in Florence and there are subtle differences, as the picture of Marie Antoinette is quite faint in the original, but in the one in Suffolk, it is much brighter and more defined, which detracts a little from the face of Madame Le Brun.

The portrait is in its original giltwood slip and has been newly framed in a 3 3/4" ornate gilt frame to complement. It will be supplied with new brass hangers and new brass picture wire and will be ready to hang.

Image size: 11 134" x 8 5/8" - 29.85cm x 21.95cm

Frame size: 21 1/4" x 18 1/8" - 54cm x 46cm

Medium: Oils on canvas

Condition: Very good for its 150 years. The painting is on its original, very fine, unlined canvas with all wedges in situ, held in place by fine nails. There are no repairs to the canvas but there is some fine craquelure, and one tiny dent in the left sleeve. The painting is in its original wooden gilded slip and the frame is new.