The Blaffer Foundation Collection

French Paintings

Architectural Landscape with Mercury and Argus

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		Jean Lemaire (called Lemaire-Poussin) Architectural Landscape with Mercury and Argus c. 1650s (?) 29 x 38 in. (73.7 x 96.5 cm.) Oil on canvas BF.1988.3
Provenance: Appeared on the London art market in 1977. Purchased from Trafalgar Galleries, London. Exhibited: Aspects of Painting over Six Centuries, London, Trafalgar Galleries, 1977, no. 11, ill.; IV Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Trafalgar Galleries, 1985, no. 17, ill.; Masterpieces of Baroque Painting from the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1992, pl. 10; Five Hundred Years of French Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, 1995, fig. 35; Music´s Power: Great European Paintings on Musical Themes, Bartlesville, Price Tower Arts Center, 2002; Old Master Paintings from the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Beeville Art Museum, 2002. Literature: Andrea Busiri Vici, "Ulteriori acquisizioni di Jean Lemaire, Antichità Viva, no. 6 (1977), pl. 24, fig. 2; Doris Wild, Nicolas Poussin (Zurich, 1980), cat. R 21 A, ill. (as Pierre Lemaire); Donatella Sparti, "Criteri museografici nella collezione dal Pozzo alla luce di documentazione inedita," in Cassiano dal Pozzo. Atti del Seminario Internazionale di Studi, ed. F. Solinas (Rome, 1989), p. 232, fig. 8 and cover ill.; Donatella Sparti, Le Collezioni dal Pozzo. Storia di una famiglia e del suo museo nella Roma seicentesca (Modena, 1992), fig. 59 (label switched with fig. 60) and fig. 61; Dessins français du XVIIe siècle dans les collections publiques françaises, exhibition catalogue by Jean Claude Boyer, Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, Michel Hilaire, and Jean-François Méjanès, Paris, Louvre, 1993, pp. 124-25, fig. 54b (as Pierre Lemaire); Maurizio Fagiolo dell´Arco, "Jean Lemaire pittore ´antiquario,´" Arte Viva, no. 5 (1994), p. 34, fig. 3; Maurizio Fagiolo dell´Arco, Jean Lemaire, pittore "antiquario" (Milan, 1996), cat. no. 11; Renaud Temperini, French Painting of the Ancien Régime from the Collection of The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (Houston, 1996), pp. 57-61. Almost nothing is known of the provenance of this painting before its appearance in London in 1977. Donatella Sparti (1989, 1992) has proposed the interesting hypothesis that it belonged to Cassiano dal Pozzo´s collection, where it would have been exhibited between two paintings by Poussin now in the National Gallery, London (the Landscape in the Roman Campagna with Travellers Resting and the Landscape in the Roman Campagna with a Man Scooping Water). However, a careful examination of the relevant documents indicates that this hypothesis rests on a very fragile foundation. There is a letter addressed to Agnolo Galli from Cassiano dal Pozzo, in which the latter explains the interest he has in placing an architectural view between two landscapes: "and, to my mind, while it is this sort of paintings [prospettive, or architectural views] that provides greater satisfaction than landscapes, it is true that I hold the opinion that it makes a most beautiful arrangement when each wall of the rooms is divided, with one prospettiva placed between two landscapes, especially if the figures in both the landscapes and the prospettive correspond in size" (1 December 1629); but, as one can see, this letter does not mention any particular painting. Moreover, in the 1689 inventory of the dal Pozzo collections, the paintings by Lemaire that are described do not correspond to the Blaffer picture. The inventory of 1695 states: "83. A painting of barely tela d´Imperatore size, with a view with a bird of the island of Malta, by Poussin. 84. Another of similar dimensions with a view, the two figures of which are by Poussin, and the view by Lemaire" [83. Un quadro di tela d´Imperatore scarsa con un´uccello dell´Isola di malta del Posino. 84. Altro simile misure con prospettiva, e due figure quali sono del Posino, e la prospettiva del Maier]. Without adequate evidence, it is therefore necessary to reject the idea that the Blaffer painting had been part of the dal Pozzo collections. The greater understanding of the work of Jean Lemaire brought about by recent studies makes clear that the attribution of this painting to Pierre Lemaire, formerly defended by some scholars, is no longer acceptable. There is a preparatory drawing for the painting (Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts), once attributed to Poussin but given to Jean Lemaire by Anthony Blunt (1943) and confirmed by Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat (Catalogue raisonné de l´oeuvre dessiné de Nicolas Poussin, Milan, 1994, cat. R 573). This drawing presents hardly any variation with respect to the painting, the artist having remained very faithful to his first idea. The palette, which is very close to that used by Poussin (as much for the figures as for the landscape and architecture), has led Maurizio Fagiolo dell´Arco (1996) to date the painting toward the period of most intense collaboration between Lemaire and Poussin: that is, in Rome during the first half of the 1630s. This dating had already been proposed by Andrea Busiri Vici (1977) and would seem to be most acceptable. The composition, delicately balanced toward the right, could suggest that the work had been conceived from the beginning as the pendant to another canvas (at present, unfortunately, not identifiable). The foreground of the painting, with the figures and the monumental ruin, appears as a veritable theatrical setting (and it is worth noting that the connections between painting, architecture, and theater were of considerable interest at the time). The landscape then pulls the viewer´s gaze progressively to the background. The subject of the painting is taken from Ovid (Metamorphoses, I, 668-721). Io, the Princess of Argos, was one of the many female conquests of Jupiter. To shield her from the jealousy of his wife, Juno, he transformed the young woman into a heifer. Juno, always suspicious and little satisfied by the evasive explanations of her husband, demanded that he make her a gift of the heifer. She then charged Argus, the giant with a hundred eyes, with keeping watch over Io. Jupiter turned to Mercury (recognizable in the painting, thanks to the caduceus at his feet), who put the giant to sleep by recounting legends to him and playing music. This is the moment that Lemaire has chosen to depict: the god plays the flute, while Io stands tranquilly at his side; Argus gradually falls asleep, leaning on a fragment of a column. Afterwards, Mercury kills the giant, who will be transformed into a peacock, and delivers Io. This subject was treated by Lemaire in at least one other painting (Munich, private collection). Nonetheless, it is clear that the essential aim of the painter was not to illustrate Ovid´s text. The simple function of the mythological episode was to render the painting more lively, and the principal subject of the work in reality consists of the landscape and the architecture. The two circular bas-reliefs that appear at the right of the composition are taken from those on the Arch of Constantine. The half-buried triumphal arch appears very frequently in Lemaire´s oeuvre (see, for example, the Landscape with Figures in Ancient Dress in the Musée Vivenel, Compiègne, or the Landscape with Herse and Aglauros, which appeared at the Chaucer Gallery, London, in 1985, and is now in a private collection). The landscape, which recalls simultaneously Poussin and Claude Lorrain, is of the highest quality and constitutes one of the most charming aspects of this very beautiful painting. The work exemplifies Lemaire´s approach to interpreting the myths and the art of antiquity: "the antique continued into the present, and vice versa, in the light of an atmospheric rendering worthy of Gaspard Dughet" (M. Fagiolo dell´Arco).