Jean Joseph TAILLASSON (1745-1809) Le Combat de Minerve cont - Lot 34

Jean Joseph TAILLASSON (1745-1809) Le Combat de Minerve contre Mars pierre noire, estompe et rehauts de craie blanche sur papier gris-beige. 21 x 28 cm Bibliography: - Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, cat. exp. Fragonard, Paris, musée Jacquemart- André, 2007, p. 44, fig. 8a ("Ecole française du XVIIIe siècle"). Jean-Bernard - Nicole Willk-Brocard, Restout, peintre du roi et révolutionnaire, Paris, Arthena, 2017, p. 171, DR. 6 ("attributed to Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier"). - Benjamin Esteves, "Jean-Joseph Taillasson (1745-1809) dessinateur: nouveautés et synthèse", in Les Cahiers d'histoire de l'art, n° 21, 2023, p. 21-22, repr. coul. p. 21, fig. 2 (Taillasson). This drawing prepares Taillasson's lost painting for the 1771 Grand Prix de l'Académie, the subject of which was the "Combat of Minerva against Mars", taken from Canto XXI of the Iliad. Taillasson was one of the favorites for this edition, for which Louis David, Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Pierre Peyron, Gabriel Lemonnier and César Vanloo also competed. Suvée won the competition (Lille, Palais des beaux-arts) ahead of David (Paris, Musée du Louvre). 16 As Benjamin Esteves points out, "this drawing by Taillasson bears striking similarities to Fragonard's enigmatic painted sketch of the same subject, particularly in the figures of Minerva, Mars and Venus, which are more compressed in this vertical format (Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts). In addition, the works by Fragonard and Taillasson are distinguished from those by Suvée and David by the presence of Juno, who appears later in the Homeric narrative. Fragonard blended her into the misty background, while Taillasson placed her in the center to close the triangle of his composition. Taillasson's painting was probably executed on the sidelines of the 1771 Grand Prix, for reasons as yet unknown. A model common to both artists has yet to be identified. However, as Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey suggests, "if Fragonard used the competition as a stylistic exercise to keep his work within the historical genre, can we assume that he would have been inspired by the works of the candidates, particularly Taillasson's?"