Allegorical Landscape In The Satyr, Neoclassical School Of The Eighteenth By A Follower Of Chick

Large neoclassical landscape of the eighteenth century, probably the second half of the eighteenth, by a follower of Poussin, made by an artist around Vien or Valenciennes. To be compared with compositions in Poussin's polyptych (particularly Spring and Landscape with Diogenes). While its golden light, arasante, Biblical in the distance, evokes another classic master, Claude Gelée dit Le Lorrain. In the same way, the aesthetics of this painting mixes Poussin with Le Lorrain under the more contemporary aegis of Valenciennes and Joseph-Marie Vien. Note the beautiful open composition of this work that plays all contrasts where the mastered drawing of trees on a rocky background occupies a large place but also the atmospheric rendering so masterfully orchestrated, these clouds surrounded by blue ranging from gray storm to glowing tones. In the background, the artist manages to bring out a mystical light that heats a dark foreground treated in dark obscure. If the subject is first of all the genre of the Landscape through the prism of mythology, this imposing and vast wilderness is animated by two characters, a fauna lying near a source towards which turns a nymph draped with red walking to an altar; the fauna, more probably the figuration of the God Pan, seems to address him a prey - perhaps a bird - as an offering to Jupiter? Composite, as is often the case with neoclassical painting, if the foreground seems anchored in a reference system related to Greece or ancient Rome, the desert background is more like the landscapes between mountains and solar deserts of the Holy Land. Some fortified or pyramidal monuments are visible in the distance. A background that allows to re-examine the landscape in the foreground composed of a source and a cliff, which, together with the figuration of the character of Pan, evokes the ancient city of Baniyas (the ancient Roman city) of Caesarea Philippi, also called Banias or Paneas and Panion) located at the sources of the Jordan sheltering the sanctuary and cave dedicated to the god Pan, in Israeli territory on the Syrian border. If the form is therefore fully neoclassical, the background is both allegorical and situable in the Promised Land (Baniyas, Israel). An open landscape of large format that blends with inspiration in the crucible of ancient mythologies of the West and the East. An elegant work of beautiful workmanship that may not have yet delivered all its mysteries.

Oil on canvas, period frame in wood and gilded stucco 86 cm x 72 cm framed - 69.6 x 55.6 cm at sight
Craquements and some wear of the gilding but good overall condition