The Cerruti Virgin and Child can be dated to Vouet’s French period and more specifically to the early 1630s [...]

Simon Vouet was born in Paris on 19 January 1590. He was first taught by his father, the painter Laurent Vouet, and to such good effect that he was able to receive commissions for portraits at the age of just fourteen, when he travelled to London to paint a noblewoman. His highly successful career then took him to Constantinople, again as a portrait painter, and then to Italy, where he spent fifteen years with stays in all the major cities, including Venice, Rome, Genoa, Milan, Bologna and Florence. It was in 1613 that he joined the ranks of the French painters active in Rome, where he took a keen interest in the works of the Caravaggesque painters with the support of collectors such as Cassiano Dal Pozzo and the Barberini family. His style gradually evolved over the years from tenebrism to a less confined theatricality initially modelled on Lanfranco and Gentileschi but then on Fetti and Lyss. In 1627, at the peak of his success, Vouet was summoned back to Paris by the French monarch and appointed first painter to the court. The artist also ran a major workshop, which maintained its primacy until Poussin’s return to France in the early 1640s and the ensuing change in taste. 

The Cerruti Virgin and Child can be dated to Vouet’s French period and more specifically to the early 1630s, when, as noted by André Félibien, “he produced a large number of Virgins and had indeed a particular gift for depicting them well”.¹ Probably inspired by the famous “half-length” Virgins of Jacques Blanchard, this series enjoyed great success that was further amplified by the circulation of twelve prints produced under the supervision of the artist and his workshop. The Cerruti painting can be regarded as the model for the engraving made by Michel Lasne in 1638, which also establishes a terminus ante quem for its dating.² Brejon de Lavergnée praises its “fine workmanship” and compares it with the inferior copy in the museum of Nîmes.³ Another version of the painting on canvas⁴ is also known as well as a preparatory sketch for the figure of the Virgin seen in profile facing left, now in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.⁵

Simone Mattiello

¹ Paris 1990-91, pp. 294-296.

² Crelly 1962, p. 236, cat. k; Paris 1990-91, p. 294.

³ Brejon de Lavergnée 1987, pp. 134-135, cat. XCVII.

⁴ Christie’s, New York, Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture, 28 January 2009, lot 44.

⁵ Brejon de Lavergnée 1987 cit.