Marcellin Desboutin (1823-1902), The Two Lovers, 1859

In the shade of a hanging vine, a dark and attractive young man offers a ring and a letter to a beautiful young blonde woman. Upset, she seems to reject his advances. This intense romantic couple is a rare work from the Italian period of Marcellin Desboutin, who was then living at the Villa Ombrellino, near Florence, a large country house he had bought in 1857. His biographer, Clément-Janin, does not begin to catalog the paintings only from 1860 and, to our knowledge, the only other painting by Desboutin dating from the end of the 1850s is the very beautiful Mother and Child, painted around 1858, which is in the collection of the Palazzo Pitti -Galleria d'arte moderna in Florence. The form and subject of our painting testify to Desboutin's interest in Italian Renaissance art, and it was precisely at this time, before his financial difficulties, that Desboutin owned an important collection of Old Master paintings in Villa Ombrellino. However, even if he lives in Florence, as a colorist, it is towards the Venetians, and especially towards Titian and Veronese, that Desboutin turns.

Later, Desboutin, friend of Manet and Degas, will participate in the second exhibition of the Impressionists in 1876, and Deux amants au temps de la Renaissance represents an interesting bridge between French Romanticism and Impressionism. See, for example, the veins of the hand of the young woman painted in sky blue, which is an extraordinary detail. The subject of the painting is interesting but difficult to define. Visibly unhappy, the young woman turns her head away from the young man and her gestures suggest that she does not want to receive the ring and the letter. At the same time as the young man seems stoic, he is also sympathetic. There is tenderness between them, they are close to each other and he has his hand around the young woman's waist. There is no doubt that the young couple are in love, but do the letter and the ring come from the young man himself, or perhaps from another person he replaces? Unfortunately, it has not been possible to identify with certainty the subject of the painting, even though it is clearly a literary subject - and it should not be forgotten that Desboutin was also a playwright and a poet. One might suggest that they depict Dante's Paolo and Francesca, where Paolo presents Francesca with a marriage proposal and engagement ring in the name of his evil brother Giovanni. But whatever the exact literary reference, Desboutin has created a complex situation with complex emotions through the gestures and the beautiful faces of the two protagonists.

During his career, Desboutin will sometimes use a monogram, as here, of an M joined to a D, and under a dividing line, the date.