Michel Corneille the Elder

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This large work certainly requires some attention. There is an original horizontal join in the canvas running through the heads of the figures in the upper center. A diagonal cut and possible attachment is visible in the upper right. There is possibly another original join running horizontally through the knees and legs of the standing figures and through the chest of the seated figure in the lower left. The only way to successfully return this painting to good condition would be to change the lining, clean the work and retouch the losses and abrasions throughout. This would be a very significant undertaking, but will ultimately result in an impressive work.
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Sylvain Kerspern has identified this painting as a work by Michel Corneille the Elder and an important addition to the artist’s oeuvre. Corneille worked in the studio of Simon Vouet and established himself in Paris primarily as a painter of religious subjects. He also produced secular decorative cycles, such as the decorations for the Galerie de Psyche, in the Hôtel Amelot de Bisseuil, Paris as well as cartoons for tapestries. The size and format of this impressive Marriage of the Virgin, and the large scale of the figures set against carefully delineated Solomonic columns, indicates that it was most probably a design for a tapestry. Corneille worked on a number of important tapestry projects, including one for Louis XIV with subjects from the Old and New Testaments and a cycle based on Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, at Châteaudun.¹

1.  See. Y. Picart, Michel Corneille L’Ancien, Paris 1994, pp. 134-158.