Michel Dorigny (Saint-Quentin 1616 – 1665 Paris)

Study of a Seated Male Nude

Black chalk, heightened with white, on buff paper, 400 x 265 mm (15.8 x 10.5 inch)

With inscription ‘dorigny’ (pen and brown ink, lower centre) and numbers and price codes in graphite on the verso

Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands

***

Born in Saint Quentin in 1616, Michel Dorigny was first appentriced to Georges Lallemand in 1630, and then became the pupil and son-in-law of Simon Vouet (1590–1649); he was renowned for his activity as an engraver and was Vouet’s principal engraver.¹ He was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1663. Dorigny was also active as a decorative painter and holds a prominent position in the history of decorative painting in mid-seventeenth-century Paris.

Dorigny’s drawn oeuvre consists of some 150 sheets.² This sheet is probably a study for a biblical or mythological scene that would have been realised either as a fresco, decorative work or easel painting. Like his master Vouet, Dorigny produced many detailed studies on paper for his ambitious compositions. Whilst in a similar style and using the same technique, Dorigny’s works differ from that of his master by a greater firmness, the treatment of the lines is more precise and the contours more defined. This sensitive nude study belongs to a group of figure studies with pupil-less eyes, with enhanced outlines and heavy hatching, largely heightened with white, in the manner of Vouet, of which an example is in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.³ Other similar sheets are in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris and in a private collection.⁴ Furthermore our drawing can be compared to Dorigny’s Study for the Muse Urania in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (fig.).⁵

This recently discovered sheet is an interesting addition to Dorigny’s drawn oeuvre. We are grateful to Damien Tellas for supporting Dorigny’s authorship; this drawing will be included in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works.

SOLD

1. For Dorigny, see: Damien Tellas, ‘L’”Apollon et les muses” de Michel Dorigny’, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts, 2018, pp. 121-136
2. Damien Tellas, Michiel Dorigny 1616–1665. Cahier du dessin français No. 21, Paris 2019.
3. Inv. no. 87.GB.104; G. Goldner and L. Hendrix, European Drawings. Catalogue of the Collection, Los Angeles 1992, vol. II, no. 77, repr.
4. Tellas, op. cit. (note 2), nos 16 and 7 resp.
5. Black chalk, 293 x 378 mm, inv. no. 1970.242.1; Jacob Bean, Lawrence Turčić, 17th century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1979, cat. no. 359, fig. no. 359, p. 272, ill.