The Genius of Music in Italy
c.1866.
Black chalk heightened with white chalk on beige paper. Signed with monogram 'PB' and inscribed:
opéra, in black chalk.
341 x 250 mm
(13 2⁄5 x 9 4⁄5 inches)
Provenance: Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 5 May, 1957, lot 3.
Literature: J. Foucart and L.-A. Prat, Les peintures de l'Opéra de Paris de Baudry à Chagall, Paris, 1980, fig. 39.
Exhibited: Zürich, Galerie Kurt Meissner, Hundert Zeichnungen aus Fünf Jahrhunderten, 1984, p.42, no.37.
La-Roche-sur-Yon 1828 ~ 1886 Paris
Our drawing is preparatory for the figure in the medallion representing Music in Italy [detail shown below], part of Baudry's decoration for The Grand Foyer of the new Paris Opéra (1862-1875). Paul Baudry was well-established as a portrait painter and much patronised by the French state in the late 1850s, when he began to undertake decorative commissions. In 1864 Charles Garnier, the architect of the new opera house and the artist's former fellow resident at the Villa Medici, Rome, commissioned him to decorate the foyer.
The Grand Foyer is Paul Baudry's masterpiece. He painted the ceilings, the surrounding panels and the medallions over the doors in the central section. He first spent a year in Rome, in 1865, studying Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling and the Carracci frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese. Then in 1868, he travelled to London to study Raphael's cartoons for his tapestries for Leo X. These were already hanging in the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria & Albert). Finally, in 1870, he returned to Italy to study the works of Tintoretto and Veronese in greater depth before finishing his work on the foyer.
Baudry's ten oval medallions, placed above the monumental doorways, represent personifications of music. The painting, for which our drawing is preparatory, is the one that the artist chose for his signature; as author of the large and magnificent cycle of decoration. It was placed over the central door leading to the loggia.1 Music in Italy is represented by a tamburella and the violin. Facing the central entrance to the Foyer a putto holds up a cartouche with the words, BAUDRY/PAUL JACQUES/INV & PINX. Our sheet shows the main figure with his violin tucked under his chin, but only a vague sketch of the third figure standing languidly on the left-hand side of the medallion. The horizontal, floating pose of the violinist is particularly reminiscent of Jacopo Tintoretto's air-born figures.
Music in Italy (detail). South wall, loggia side, (actually viewed horizontally).
1. Gérard Fontaine, Charles Garnier's Opéra, Architecture and Interior Decor, (trans. from the French by Charles Penward), Paris, 2004, pp.153 & 170 illustrated.
