Ambroise DUBOIS (1543-1614) - Lot 20

Ambroise DUBOIS (1543-1614) Venus and Love, Before 1595 Oil on canvas H_141 cm W_90 cm (Faded, edges repaired and restored, in a XIXᵉ frame). In front of her unmade bed, Love at her side, Venus is depicted full-length, her quiver on the ground and an arrow in her hand. In this classic Renaissance depiction, Dubois uses the colors of his Italian inspiration, blended with the serpentine figure of the Mannerist. serpentine figure of the Antwerp mannerism of his training. A native of Flanders, we know little about the early life of this major artist of the Second Fontainebleau School. Dubois concentrated mainly on painting large-scale decors, notably in Fontainebleau, where from 1595 he worked on embellishing the château for Henri IV and Marie de Médicis. Our painting, whose commission remains a mystery, may have been part of a larger cycle. However, a monogram present in various places in the painting, such as on the bed and the quiver, could give us a clue as to who commissioned it, a person who remains unidentified today. Our painting, which we fully attribute to the artist, suffers today from restorations that hamper the reading of the work. In fact, some of the work's particularly covering interventions bear witness more to the restorer's heavy-handedness than to the painter's. than that of the painter. This attribution is also taken up by the Revue des musées de France in its recent publication of our work. Bibliography - Nouveaux éclairages sur Giampietrino, Jacob de Backer and Antoine Caron, Revue des musées de France. Revue du Louvre, 3, 2025, fig. 11 p. 54. Expert : Cabinet ARTÉON