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Alexandre Évariste Fragonard

Francis I in Benvenuto Cellini's Studio

Artist

Alexandre Évariste Fragonard
Grasse, France, 1780 – Paris 1850

Title

Francis I in Benvenuto Cellini's Studio

Date

1820-1830

Materials

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

65.5 x 81.5 cm

Credits

Purchase, the Museum Campaign 1988-1993 and the Cecil and Marguerite Buller Funds, inv. 2004.108

Collection

Western Art

After learning to paint from his famous father, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Alexandre Évariste joined the studio of the illustrious Neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David. His meticulously painted canvases present charming scenes and stories from French history, depicted in a nostalgic, moralizing manner. Fragonard’s painting derives as much from Romanticism as from the Troubadour spirit. This work illustrates an episode in the life of the celebrated Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini: Cellini is invited to the French court of Francis I. Fragonard is extolling the enlightened royal patronage that is capable of recognizing the superiority of genius. Cellini is shown as an artist whose attitude to the king is not at all servile. He looks on with an air of calm authority, while the king, with an eloquent gesture, shows his mistress, the Duchess d’Étampes – who was openly hostile to the sculptor – what great art is.

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