France, second half of the 18th century, Trompe l'oeil of a marble bas-relief with cherubs 

France, second half of the 18th century

Trompe l'oeil of a marble bas-relief with cherubs 

Oil on canvas, 51 x 116 cm

A group of cupids and small fauns, rendered in grisaille on a horizontal canvas, occupies the scene with the naturalness of an ancient frieze. The composition is divided into three distinct groups. In the foreground, on the left, a pair of putti sleeps abandoned on the ground: their plump bodies overlap in a chaotic embrace, amid bunches of grapes alluding to the processions of Bacchus. To the center and right, a more lively group shows several children, one with the features of a small faun, intent on playing with an animal resembling a dog or lion cub, which they pull and ride with tender impetuosity. In the background, next to a tree with slender branches and a vase, another group of cupids brandishes arrows and darts. Here the technique becomes even more interesting: the more distant figures are rendered in stiacciato, the sculptural technique originating with Donatello that progressively reduces the thickness of the relief to suggest depth. The painter transfers the principle onto the painted surface, blurring the contours and attenuating the chiaroscuro, so that space is constructed through the gradation of simulated reliefs.

The genre to which the work belongs enjoyed great popularity in France between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Grisaille paintings with cherubs and antique scenes, designed to imitate marble or stucco bas-reliefs, were intended to decorate overdoors, panels, and wood paneling, perfectly in keeping with the neoclassical taste for antiquity and the pleasure of visual deception, trompe-l'oeil, which made painting indistinguishable from sculpture.

The undisputed master of this production was Piat Joseph Sauvage, a painter from Tournai who specialized in interior decorations, grisailles, and illusionistic miniatures, as well as small-scale carved portraits. He was court painter to the governor of the Southern Netherlands, the Prince of Condé, and Louis XVI, and a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. In 1808, he returned to Tournai to direct the Academy of Drawing, where Antoine Payen was among his students: it is plausible that it was in this environment that the author of our painting encountered his work and reworked its stylistic elements.

The comparisons are eloquent. The Playing Cupids from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York share with the canvas the lightness of the childlike theme and the almost sculptural rendering of the bodies. The Children's Bacchanal from the National Trust in England offers a direct precedent for the Dionysian atmosphere, with cherubs and animals in a playful procession. Finally, the Playing Putti from the Victoria and Albert Museum suggest the same handling of relief, graduated until it almost completely disappears into the distant planes.

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