Lot 35: Jesus among the Doctors discovered by Mary and Joseph

Nicolas Mignard, called Mignard d'Avignon (Troyes 1606-1688 Paris)
Jesus among the Doctors discovered by Mary and Joseph
signed 'Mignard'
black lead, red chalk, closely squared in pen and brown ink
18 7/8 x 12 in. (481 x 305 mm.)

Elder brother of Pierre Mignard (1610-1695), First Painter to King Louis XIV, Nicolas spent most of his career in Provence where he was arguably the leading religious painter of his time.
This large drawing, a rare example of a highly developed full compositional study, is for one of Mignard's largest pictures (425 x 360 cm.), executed with very few differences in 1649 for the Chartreuse of Villeneuve-les-Avignons, and now in the city's museum (A. Schnapper, Mignard d'Avignon (1606-1668), Avignon, 1979, no. 37). It illustrates an episode from St. John's Gospel when Mary and Joseph having lost their Son eventually find him in the Temple. The young Jesus is shown teaching among the Doctors of the Law, whose positions and faces express shock and surprise at the Child's superior intelligence and insight.
This work is highly characteristic of the artist's drawing technique and style. As in most of his composition studies, the left-handed Mignard uses a dry red chalk and emphasizes certain details with black lead, thus creating more volume. He then carefully squares his composition with pen and brown ink. For his numerous studies of individual figures, he prefers a thicker red chalk which he sometimes heightens with white chalk. Two studies of this type for the figures of Jesus and Mary in Jesus among the Doctors are in the Louvre (Schnapper, op. cit., D. 25-6).