Lot 1326: APOLLO UND VESTA

FRANÇOIS ANDRÉ VINCENT, APOLLO UND VESTA, Oil on canvas (relined), 99,5 x 136 cm
Provenance Formerly in the collection of the Counts of Sellon, Geneva (on the reverse of the relined canvas the collector´s label with the coat-of-arms of the counts of Sellon).- Private collection, Bavaria.When the Comte d´Angeviller commissioned two history paintings for Louis XVI in 1787, he chose the two leading artists of his time, Jacques Louis David und François André Vincent - David painted The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, and Vincent presented Zeuxis Choosing Models from the Beautiful Women of Croton (both Musée du Louvre, Paris). The choice of the themes has been interpreted as presenting different concepts of art from these two painters. In any case, the royal commission at the dawn of the French Revolution clearly shows that Vincent, alongside David, had a high reputation and was regarded worthy of the most important royal commissions.The present painting showing Apollo and Vesta can be related to the Zeuxis in the Louvre (ill. no. 1), especially with regard to the conception of the figures. It depicts a theme whose iconography at first seems to be uncommon. In contrast to other deeds of the sun god, the story of Apollo and Vesta has not influenced antique literature, for instance Ovid´s Metamorphoses, and thus has not been represented by painters in later times. The story can be summarised as follows: Apollo desires Vesta, the sister of Jupiter, but she rejects him and, taking a vow of chastity, is then chosen as guardian of the sacred fire. The Romans worshipped her in the circular temple on the Forum as goddess of the hearth.The painting puts Apollo´s desire and Vesta´s refusal on stage as a classical drama with ancient architecture as its setting. The statue of Minerva, the trivet, the fluted columns and pilasters indicate that the architecture represents a temple. The painting represents the decisive moment when Apollo reaches for Vesta and she tries to repel his inappropriate attack. The whole action is condensed in the arms of the two figures crossing each other, whereas otherwise the contours of the figures do not overlap at all. The scene is performed in the grand style; despite the dramatic action, the figures are depicted with a statuaric gravity, only their attributes disclose their emotions: Apollo´s kithara lying on the floor and the flame on the trivet waving slightly.This painting obviously addressed a beholder who was educated and interested, who read Diderot´s Salons as well as Winckelmann´s Geschichte der Kunst, who was informed about the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum as well as about the young winners of the Prix de Rome. The design of the trivet for example, or the floor with the opus sectile refer to the excavations of the ancient towns at Vesuvius, and the depiction of the two gods offers a multitude of references to classical sculptures without slavishly copying them: The Apoll of Belvedere, the Vesta Giustiniani, the Capitoline Venus or the Niobe Group.The painting Apollo und Vesta can be connected to the Zeuxis in the Louvre, especially with regard to the representation of the figures: Vesta resembles the central virgin in the Zeuxis in relation to the posture of her head and her body, her features and her hair, even though the posture of her arms is different according to the different narrative (if one links the figure of Vesta to the figure of the virgin, the connection of Vesta to the Capitoline Venues becomes more clear). The figure of Apollo equals - mirror-inverted - the figure of Zeuxis, and in this case also, only the posture of the arms is different. Considering the practice of the painters of Neo-Classicism to design the figures initially as nudes, the similarity between Apollo and Zeuxis becomes even more obvious. The relation between the two works is also detected in other elements: The concept of space and the relation between the figures and the space, but also details like the statue of Minerva or the pedestal, details that can also be found in Vincent's drawing The Infant Pyrrhus Before Glaucias (ill. no. 2).It is an interesting fact that the measurements of this painting equate those of a replica of the Zeuxis that was offered on the art market in 2007. From a letter of Comte d´Angiviller it is known that Vincent, as well as David, painted such replicas of their large history paintings for private collectors. Accordingly, Apollo und Vesta can also be regarded as a work that - like the Zeuxis - was painted by François André Vincent for such a private collector. Another hint for this destination of the painting can be seen in its theme, an affair of the gods. French art of the Neo-Classicisal period has been mostly regarded as political art ín revolutionary times, and accordingly the large history paintings have received the most attention. But the artists continued to depict classical themes for instance from Ovid´s Metamorphoses for private collectors, Jacques Louis David´s Helena and Paris in the Musée du Louvre being one example. Werner Hofmann spoke of a double life of the painters of that time. This painting, depicting Apollo and Vesta, can be counted among these paintings that were commissioned by private collectors from artists such as François André Vincent.

99,5 x 136 cm