Nicolas Vleughels

Panel is ever so slightly curved. A vertical panel join is visible just left of center. Under a dirty varnish. There is a very fine craquelure pattern, but it is not distracting. Ultraviolet reveals retouches here and there. Most of the retouching is confined to around the figures, for example in the woman's hair and the outline of her bottom and thigh. Dirty varnish may render other retouches impossible to see with ultraviolet. In a carved and giltwood frame with minor chips to gilding.
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The present painting takes as its subject the story, "Le Bât," or, The Pack Saddle, by Jean de la Fontaine, the most famous French fabulist and poet of the 17th century.  In the tale, a wary husband, suspecting his wife of infidelity, paints the image of a donkey over her pudendum.  While he is away, the wife's suitor, another artist, makes loves to her, rubbing off the painting.  Before doing so, however, the suitor had prudently copied the likeness onto a canvas, seen here on the easel behind the adulteress.  As Vleughels illustrates, the lover then recopies the ass, but adds a "pack saddle," which is found by the husband as evidence of his wife's infidelity.  

The present painting depicts the central grouping of figures from another larger Vleughels composition, which is known from an engraving by N. de Larmessin.  (See B. Hercenberg, Nicolas Vleughels, Peintre et Directeur de l'Academie de France à Rome, 1668 - 1737, Paris 1975, p. 107, cat. no. 133, fig. 145).  The subject was clearly popular with French artists in Rome during the 18th century: not only did Vleughels and his followers paint a number of these compositions (op. cit, pp. 125 - 127, cat. nos. 223 - 229) but Pierre Subleyras addressed the theme in two pictures, one now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. no. 4703), and the other, formerly with Stair Sainty, London.