"Drawing On Cardboard, Woman With Child In An Assembly, 18th Century? "
This is a mysterious subject, which is difficult for us to identify with certainty; a woman with a child on her knees, surrounded by an assembly of figures, probably male, another woman seated behind her, recognizable by her "Botticellian" drapes, and a child at her feet. It could be the representation of a Holy Family, surrounded by various saints (impossible to identify in the absence of attributes): the Virgin and Child, Saint Anne, the little Saint John the Baptist, the "Precursor". The sketch of what looks like a blue palette and the central and serene position of the supposed Virgin could also evoke for us a Saint Luke painting the Virgin, without these different hypotheses excluding each other, in which case we would have to see an interesting phenomenon of intericonicity. The state of the work does not facilitate its readability. Its support is an oval cardboard dated on the reverse 1760, without this date representing a guarantee. Technique: charcoal, black chalk, traces of wash, white highlights. Dimensions: 430 mm x 370 mm