Live Auction 7842Old Masters and 19th Century Art
Christie’s roundel
Lot 42

François Boucher (Paris 1703-1770)

The Virgin and Child with Saint Stanislas Kostka

Closed30 April 2010

Price Realised

GBP 49,250

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François Boucher (Paris 1703-1770)
The Virgin and Child with Saint Stanislas Kostka
signed [?] 'f. Boucher' (lower left)
oil on canvas
88½ x 65 in. (225 x 165 cm.)

(Probably) commissioned by the Society of Jesus for the Noviciat des Jésuites, Faubourg Saint-Germain, Paris, in 1726.
(Probably) sold following the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1762.
(Probably) Marquis de Maupeou.
Vincent Donjeux, Paris; (+) sale, Lebrun and Paillet, Paris, 29 April 1793, lot 359 'Un grand tableau, représentant le sujet d'un religieux qui recoit l'Enfant Jésus des mains de la Vierge. Ce morceau est d'un beau ton de couleur (150 livres to Dufour).
Private collection, France, from the middle of the 19th Century.

Specialist note

We are grateful to Alastair Laing for confirming the attribution after inspection of the original and for proposing its likely early provenance. A very early work by the artist, Laing points out that Boucher seems to have taken the essential elements of his composition from Murillo's Saint Felix of Cantalice receiving the Christ child from the Virgin, formerly in the Capuchin church and now in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville, thus posing the question as to how Boucher could have known of it. Most probably he knew it by virtue of a copy; Murillo's picture was clearly very popular and numerous copies of it are known.