The present work, depicting a drapery clad male angel, his hands clasped together in prayer whilst his right knee rests on a Celestial cloud, is a characteristic example of Jouvenet’s energetic handling of the black chalk medium. The artist has also, as he was frequently prone to, used white chalk to heighten the luminous qualities of the angelic figure.

Though it has thus far not been possible to directly connect the angel with one of the artist’s painted compositions, the figure type is highly consistent, both in his appearance and artistic function, to other angels that feature prominently in some of the artist’s most important surviving works. In particular one can draw a close comparison to the angel in the upper right corner of Jouvenet's composition depicting St. Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow, housed in the Chapel of the Laennec Hospital, Paris,¹ as well as a similar angel who appears in the lower right corner of The Apotheosis of St. John, in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen.²

Stylistically the present drawing is also highly comparable in its handling to some of the small number of surviving figure studies by the artist. The charming pentimento to the face of the angel can be closely compared to a much more loosely drawn figure of A man with his arms upraised, in Stockholm,³ in which Jouvenet’s very distinctive and economical way of drawing the figure’s eyes is perhaps most apparent. A similar stylistic comparison can also be drawn between the way in which Jouvenet handles the billowing folds of drapery, between the present work and a drawing of A seated female figure, in the collection of the Musée du Louvre, Paris.⁴

^1. See A. Schnapper, Jean Jouvenet et la peinture d'histoire à Paris, Paris 1974, pp. 184-5, no. 8, reproduced, fig. 6

^2. Ibid., p. 210, no. 104, reproduced, fig. 107

^3. Ibid., pp. 230-1, no. 185, reproduced, fig. 131

^4. Ibid., pp. 226-7, no. 160, reproduced, fig. 52