The Massacre of the Innocents,
oil on canvas, 111 x 153 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France, from 1950;
sale, Millon, Paris, 13 June 2018, lot 20 (as Attributed to Jacques Friquet de Vauroze);
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Sylvain Kerspern for his help in cataloguing this painting and for suggesting an attribution to Charles Le Brun for the present painting.

The rendering of the landscape and certain figures indicate that the present work is an unfinished painting or a sketch, albeit well advanced. Kerspern argues that this composition relates to Charles Le Brun’s The Massacre of the Innocents in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, due to similarities in many shared features. Certain stylistic differences, he argues can explained by both the unfinished character of the present work and the fact that the Dulwich version underwent a significant reworking twenty-five years after its conception. Therefore, this Massacre of the Innocents could be an insight into the working practice of Le Brun after he returned from Rome to France in 1646-1647, under the Regency of Anne of Austria, before the establishment of Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (please refer to the department for a more extensive catalogue note).