Jean Le Clerc

This Adoration was most likely executed by Jean Le Clerc in Rome, where he is recorded as living in the house of the Venetian painter Carlo Saraceni. Indeed the work is directly comparable to Saraceni's larger Adoration of the Magi in a private collection in Munich.¹ Although Le Clerc repeats the pose of the Virgin and Child, as well as the general structure of the design, he does not slavishly copy Saraceni but rather makes intelligent use of certain elements within the latter's work to develop his own individual and well thought through composition. This oil on copper therefore provides new insights into the relationship between Le Clerc and Saraceni. Very few works from Le Clerc's Italian period are known.

We are grateful to Bruno Saunier for endorsing the attribution to Jean Le Clerc, on the basis of a photograph. He compares the present work to Le Clerc's Resurrection of Lazarus, recently acquired by the Musée du Louvre (inv. no. R.F. 2011-57). 

1. A. Ottani Cavana, Carlo Saraceni, Milan 1968, p. 108, cat. no. 38, reproduced plate 43.