Jacques Courtois, called Il Borgognone

Frau M. Ziegler-Wegmann, Zurich;
Private collection, Zurich;
Anonymous sale, Lucerne, Fischer, 21 November 1972, lot 2215.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a firm quite recent lining and stretcher, with a recent restoration. The distinctive Roman weave of the canvas is more noticeable in the sky. In the lower half of the painting the beautifully rich flowing brushwork is magnificently intact and unworn, especially across the figures in the foreground. In some scenes in the more distant landscape there are thinner areas where the canvas grain is more marked and the darker details are fainter, while the highlights remain crisp. A few of the darks in the central group have been strengthened in the brims of the hats against the sky, and along the skyline to the right the flag has been strengthened as have occasional other darker details nearby, and the wider horizon has been more extensively cleaned, as has the sky generally. There are scattered small strengthening retouchings especially along the lower sky, more widespread in some thinner areas for instance at centre left where there are two larger retouched fillings near the central stretcher bar line. The bar lines have other small retouchings, and there are retouchings along the top edge, sometimes from old damages, with others in places along the side edges in the sky. The lower half of the painting has very few retouchings or accidental damages, apart from one small group of little retouched knocks in the lower right corner by the joining of the stretcher bars, with a short vertical tear, about two inches high, nearby presumably caused by the tautening of the wedges. However this has not affected the beautiful condition overall in the lower half of the picture. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

After receiving his initial training from his father, Courtois left for Italy at the age of fifteen. He first arrived in Milan and there he met the Baron de Vatteville, whom he subsequently followed on military campaigns during a period of three years. This gave him the opportunity to observe real battles and he made drawings of the actions to which he was a witness, as confirmed by the biographer Filippo Baldinucci and by the numerous sheets of studies today in the British Museum and Musée du Louvre. It is this first-hand experience that imbued Courtois' battle-scenes with greater naturalism than those of his contemporaries, as eloquently described by Baldinucci: 'so he painted not only the things that could be painted, but also those that could not... his imaginary battles suggest, even if our ears cannot hear them, that at least we can imagine the terrifying shouts of the soldiers engaged in the fights, the screams of the wounded, the moans of the dying, the din of the bombs and the boom of the grenades, just as if they were real and not imaginary'.¹ Indeed this scene of the aftermath of battle is so vividly described that one can almost hear the groans of the wounded, as described so well by Baldinucci. Though Courtois is known to have travelled all over Italy, visiting Bologna, Venice, Florence and Siena, he ultimately settled in Rome, where he was to continue to paint battles for a noble clientele (including the Barberini, Chigi, Sacchetti, and Pamphilij, in whose collection numerous examples still exist).

A chronology of his œuvre is problematic since very few of his paintings are dated, but during his first Roman period - that is in the early and mid-1640s - Courtois' battles appear to be influenced by those of Aniello Falcone, as is the case for the present work; compare, for example, the pair representing a Battle and an Encampment in the Musei Capitolini, Rome.²  Given that the present picture is painted on a Roman canvas and that the plasticity of the figures and, in particular, the manner in which the middle and far distance are portrayed, are both influenced by Falcone, it is reasonable to assume a dating of the present painting in the fifth decade of the 17th century, just prior to Courtois' employment as battle-painter for Prince Mattias de' Medici, brother of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, in Florence, from 1651 to 1655.

1. F. Baldinucci, Notizie, 1681-1725, ed. 1847, p. 123: 'cioè di aver egli dipinto non solo le cose che dipingere si potevano, ma quelle ancora che non si potevano dipingere... le sue finte battaglie, fanno in un certo modo se non sentire all'orecchio, rappresentare con terrore al pensiero il gridare de' soldati nelle zuffe, lo stridere dei feriti, il lamentare di moribondi, lo strepitare delle bombarde e lo scuotere delle mine, per cosi dire come se vere fossero e non finte'.
2.  See G. Sestieri, I Pittori di Battaglie. Maestri italiani e stranieri del XVII e XVIII secolo, Rome 1999, p. 160, figs. 3 and 4.