Attributed to Nicolas Tournier Montbéliard, Doubs 1590 - before February 1639 Toulouse

Hitherto apparently unrecorded and unpublished, this painting may be compared to Tournier's famous Virgin and Child today in the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (inv. no. Ro282; reproduced in the exhibition catalogue, Nicolas Tournier 1590-1639. Un peintre Caravaggesque, Toulouse, Musée des Augustins, 29 March - 1 July 2001, cat. no. 32). Both paintings share an austere simplicity of form and light which recalls the artist's earlier sojourn in Rome where, alongside Nicolas Régnier, Simon Vouet and Valentin de Boulogne, he was one of the principal exponents of French Caravaggism. Perhaps suprisingly the Toulouse painting appears to be the only extant picture of this subject by Tournier. In the catalogue of the exhibition Axel Hémery argues that it is a late work by Tournier, comparable to his Tobias and the angel today in the Cathedral of Saint Just in Narbonne.