René Dudot (c.1650) The Virgin And Child And Saint John The Baptist

René DUDOT
(active in Rouen and Paris between 1640 and 1659)
The Virgin and Child with the little Saint Jean-Baptiste
H. 73 cm; L. 57.5 cm

It was in Rouen that René Dudot was most active in the heart of the 17th century. Only twenty years of life are traced thanks to the archives left by baptisms and marriages. In 1640 he made his first appearance, in Paris for the baptism of his daughter Anne and other children received baptism in several Parisian churches until 1649. In 1646 he witnessed the marriage of a certain Nicolas Boutin, son of 'a master carpenter from Vernon in Eure. Is this detail the revelation of his Norman origin which he abandoned to work in Paris? His name is each time followed by the titles “painter” then “master painter”. In 1651 René Dudot appears for the first time in the known archives in Rouen, where he was received on December 22 Master of Painters of the city. The following year he illustrated the frontispiece of a local edition of a “Life of Saint Romain”, then in 1653 he produced nineteen vignettes for “The Imitation of the Life of Jesus”. Two years later, it was the factory of Rouen Cathedral which stipulated in its accounts the payment of sixty pounds, for an altar painting dedicated to the new altarpiece in the sacristy. The last date that appears today is that of 1659, when René Dudot returned to Paris and created a Death of the Virgin, which is none other than a May of Notre Dame. The painter therefore seems to have divided himself between Paris and Rouen, a Norman town which we suppose to be his original homeland, to which he was able to bring a breath of artistic novelty through his Parisian links. It should be noted that if his children were born during the 1640s, he himself must have been born around 1610/20, just like Charles Le Brun or Sébastien Bourdon. Certainly these artists knew each other from working on similar subjects at the same period, but when observing the works of Bourdon and Dudot stylistically, it is not difficult to see a certain brotherhood. Note, the little-known painting by Réné Dudot has often been attributed to Sébastien Bourdon, until recently at the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge or in pieces sold by the Wildenstein gallery. It was only thanks to a signed painting kept at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen (fig.1) and some very rare engravings that the painter's work was brought back from oblivion during the 19th century. Since then, the artist's typical physiognomies have made it possible to reattribute several paintings, the majority of which are kept in private homes. Small pointed noses, soft faces with fine features, light flesh highlighted with purple areas, these are the characteristics that Dudot gives to his characters. If our composition is so classic in the History of Art, the way in which the painter presents it is very gentle and tender. The fairly lively colors he uses obviously recall the Italian compositions of the previous century from which all of France was inspired in the 17th century. The background landscape, decorated with a pyramid, inevitably reminds us of the flight into Egypt of the Holy Family and the works of Nicolas Mignard. Other compositions of the same subject are known, where the postures vary (fig.2 and 3).