Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne

Private Collection, Paris;
With Thomas Le Claire, exhibited New York, W.M. Brady & Co. Inc. (Thomas Le Claire Kunsthandel IX - Master Drawings 1500-1900), 1994, no. 20;
sale, London, Christie's 2 July 1996, lot 203

N. Sainte Fare Garnot, Philippe De Champaigne et son Atelier, Cahiers du Dessin Français - N^o. 11, Paris 2000, no. 45, reproduced p. 83, fig. 45

This assured and pious red chalk study of Saint Theresa is a preparatory drawing for Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne's painting of Christ showing his wounds to Saint Theresa, painted in gold ground, now in the Musée Granet, Aix-en Provence (fig. 1).  Bernard Dorival was the first to make the connection between the present study and the painting.  The painting depicts Saint Theresa kneeling with her hands crossed against her chest as she experiences one of her visions.  The touches of white in this drawing are both practical and aesthetic, as a guidance for light fall in the final painting and as an attractive element in the preliminary study.

An inventory made in 1789 for the Carmel of Faubourg-Saint-Jacques mentions that Champaigne had executed a series of six compositions on Saint Theresa's life.  The Musée Granet painting and another of Saint Theresa by Champaigne in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing, are possibly two of the works from this series.  Another drawing of Saint Theresa in Ecstasy by Champaigne, now in the Darmstadt Museum¹, is also probably related to the cycle painted for the Carmel of the Faubourg-Saint-Jacques.

^1. B. Dorival, Philippe de Champaigne 1602-1674, vol. 2, Paris 1976, no. 1694, reproduced