This elegant depiction of a Neapolitan woman was painted by François-André Vincent during his brief sojourn in Naples, from April 15 to June 14, 1774. At the young age of twenty two, Vincent won the prestigious Prix de Rome, granting him the opportunity to study in Rome at the French Academy in the Palazzo Mancini, where he spent four years (1771-1775). Beyond the exceptional execution and dazzling pictorial effects, this painting serves as a precious document of the relationship between Vincent, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and his Parisian patron Bergeret de Grancourt, who crossed paths during the young artist’s t.mes in Italy.
During his two-month stay in Naples, Vincent witnessed the feast days of the city’s patron saint, Janarius, and the King of Naples, a t.mes when local cost.mes s were at their most extravagant. Here Vincent captures the splendor of the woman’s elaborate festival cost.mes with brilliant exactness and execution. By illuminating the model against a dark background, Vincent exploits the various fabrics and textures of her clothing. With a meticulous technique, he lavishes in the details of her poppy red skirt, gold embroidery, and rich display of jewelry–a synthesis of Spanish, Italian, and Islamic influences. The woman, perhaps a professional model, has a round face and gentle smile, described with the naturalism and close attention of a portrait. Each element of her cost.mes is excessively detailed, attesting to the artist’s concern for documentary precision, then unheard of in French painting. As seen here, the diligent representation of picturesque cost.mes s would become a constant of Vincent’s work.
While in Rome in 1774, Vincent was introduced to Bergeret de Grancourt, one of the wealthiest collects ors in France, who commissioned his portrait from the artist.1 Accompanied by Fragonard and Bergeret and perhaps at their invitation, Vincent journeyed to Naples from mid-April to mid-June of that year, during which t.mes he painted this sumptuous work. At the same moment, the woman depicted here also posed for Fragonard, who drew her on at least two occasions: a full-face wash drawing in the Morgan Library, New York (fig. 1) and a full-length seated portrait in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt (fig. 2). In both drawings, Fragonard's inscriptions identify the woman as “femme de Ste. Lucie”, possibly a street vendor or pedestrian of the famous Passeggiata di Santa Lucia in Naples. Two additional drawings (both locations unknown), variously attributed by scholars to either Fragonard or Vincent, also depict this model in a similar pose, but the relationship between the drawings and the finished painting remains unclear.2
(Right) Fig. 2 Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Neapolitan Woman, Sitting Outside, brown ink over traces of black chalk on ribbed laid paper. Frankfurt, Städel Museum, inv. no. 1104Z.
Following his return to France, Vincent exhibited the present painting at the Salon of 1777. Its inclusion in the salon, nearly three years after its execution, is proof of the importance that the artist attributed to this picture. The composition was sketched there by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin in the margins of the exhibition catalogue, or livret, where it is recorded as “Une figure en pied: cost.mes Napolitain,” (fig. 3). 3 Though there is no mention of the painting’s owner in the livret, it is probable that Bergeret de Grancourt already owned it by that t.mes . Vincent’s painting was received with praise, described by one viewer as “worthy of the great masters.”4 Indeed, the picture hung in Grancourt’s collects ion as a pendant to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout’s Man with a Large Hat (location unknown).5 Though at first glance a seemingly unusual pairing, the richness and dramatic light of the present work would have been, according to eighteenth-century taste, “Rembrandtean” in quality.
1 François-André Vincent, Portrait de Pierre-Jacques-Onésyme Bergeret. Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, inv. no. D.843.1.27.
2 See J.P. Cuzin 2013, p. 383, cat. nos. 179D and 180D; the first was formerly in the Charles Gasc collects ion circa 1857 and last documented with Galerie Pardo, Paris in 1963 (as by Fragonard); the second is known only from a nineteenth-century sale catalogue illustration (Hotel Drouot, 16-17 May 1898, lot 121).
3 See G. de Saint Aubin 1777, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
4 La prêtresse ou nouvelle manière de Prédire, Paris 1777, p. 20.
5 According to the description of the present work in the 1786 sale catalogue of Grancourt’s collects ion.