Ancient Paintings Of The 17th Century French School

"THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST" and "CHRIST GIVES THE KEYS TO SAINT PETER"
ATELIER OF JACQUES STELLA.

CANVAS DIMENSIONS = 88 X 66 - 88 X 67 CM
TOTAL DIMENSIONS WITH FRAME = 105 X 82 CM

The originals of these canvases were part of a very famous series of the "Seven Sacraments" that POUSSIN painted twice:
The first series for CASSIANO DAL POZZO around 1636 and the second, started in 1644, for the collector CHANTELOU, who wanted to have his own: This is the second version.
POUSSIN did not replicate the works, but took up the theme with many variations.
The Chantelou series became part of the Duke of Orleans collections, which were dispersed with the French Revolution.
The originals then went to the Duke of Bridgewater and are now part of the collections of the National Gallery of Edinburgh.
The author of these canvases presents himself as a very careful and diligent copyist.
The two rare works are part of all replicas by Poussin, are of particular historical, artistic and cultural interest and are to be assigned to the family of the STELLA painters, probably to one of JACQUES STELLA's nephews.


Jacques Stella (1596 - April 29, 1657) was a French painter, a leading exponent of the neoclassical style of the Parisian attic.
His father was François Stella, a painter and merchant of Flemish origin, but he died too early to train Jacques in painting. Jacques's brothers were François the Younger and Madeleine (sculptor and mother of artists). He was the uncle of Antoinette, Claudine, Françoise (a pastel artist) and Antoine Stella.
Jacques Stella was trained in Lyon before spending the period from 1616 to 1621 at the court of Cosimo II de Medici in Florence, working alongside Jacques Callot- Florentine art has a strong influence on all of Stella's work. On Cosimo's death in 1621 Stella moved to Rome, where he spent the next 10 years and gained fame thanks to his paintings of him, small engravings and works painted on stones (onyx, lapis lazuli or simply slate). Working particularly for Pope Urban VIII, Stella was influenced in Rome by classicism and more precisely by the art of Nicolas Poussin, with whom he became close friends.
Returning to Lyon in 1634 before moving to Paris a year later, Stella was introduced to Louis XIII by Cardinal Richelieu. The king named him peintre du roi (in the sense that from that moment he lived in the Louvre) and granted him a pension of 1000 lire. He returned several times to the theme of Christ's childhood: there are five different versions he made of "Jesus discovered by his parents in the temple". He took on many commissions and also decorated the Saint-Louis chapel at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the choir of the église Saint-François-Xavier (1641–42) together with Poussin and Simon Vouet. From 1644 he participated in the decoration of the Palais-Cardinal. Towards the end of his life he devoted himself more and more to drawing. In addition to painting and drawing he was an important art collector throughout his life, building a collection of paintings by Poussin and Raphael and drawings by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. He died in Paris.