Louis de Caullery

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Pictures of Everyday Life: Genre Painting in Europe 1500-1900, 14 October - 12 December 1954, no. 14;
Valenciennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Watteau et la fête galante, 5 March - 14 June 2004, no. 15.

O.T. Banks, Watteau and the North: Studies in the Dutch and Flemish Baroque Influence on French Rococo Painting, New York and London 1977, p. 209, reproduced fig. 155;
O. Koester, Flemish Paintings 1600-1800, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Copenhagen 2000, p. 82;
M. Eidelberg (ed.), Watteau et la fête galante, exhibition catalogue, Valenciennes 2004, cat. no. 15, pp. 110, 268, and 275, reproduced in color, p. 111;
A. Metternich (ed.), "Watteau et la fête galante", in Connaissance des Arts, hors-série, no. 216, 2004, reproduced in color, p. 14.

Panel has been cradled. the paint surface has been quite well retained and there is very nice detail throughout in figures. examination under ultraviolet reveals some retouching along what appears to be a horizontal join near top edge which runs through foliage and face of Venus. some retouching near bottom edge in pink gown of woman to right of center. otherwise, very little fluoresces. painting can be hung in its present state. In a carved and gilt wood frame.
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The subject is based on Philostratus' Imagines, which describe a painting in which revelers, mostly women, engage in sacrificial celebrations beside the statue of Venus. Furthermore, it can be connected to Ovid's calender of Roman festivals (Fasti 4th book, 133-192), which describes the festival of 'Venus Verticordia' ("changer or transformer of hearts"), who was worshipped for her power to transform the impure desires of young women from that of carnal love to pure love. The festival of Venus Verticordia occurred annually on April 1st, the first day of the month dedicated to the goddess.¹

This work is entirely typical of the sophisticated, yet purposefully sweet naiveté developed by Louis de Caullery, who worked in Antwerp at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He often injected slightly eroticized undertones into his outdoor fête scenes. His figures are characterized by their delicate features, particularly their small eyes and soft skin. A variant of the present composition, of reduced dimensions, is in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. KMS1978). Only two signed works by Louis Caullery are known, a Carnival scene in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg; and a Gallant Festival in an Interior (Allegory of the Five Senses), dated 1620, in the Louvre (on deposit in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Cambrai).

1. Koester, op.cit.