Jean Antoine Laurent

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 13 October 1999, lot 99;

Where acquired by the present owner. 

Paris, Salon, 1822, no. 787 ('Raymond, Prince of Antioch, uncle of this queen, having reason to complain against her husband, Louis, and wishing to seek revenge, proposed to Éléonore a new marriage to the Sultan of Iconia, on condition that the latter have himself baptized and enter an alliance with Raymond. Louis, informed of the plot by his loyal servants, foiled this intrigue, and had his queen extricated from the affair when she least expected it').

Eleanor of Guyenne was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II, and Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right from 1137 until her death in 1204. As Queen of France, Eleanor participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade, undertaken to protect the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Whilst contemporary sources praise Eleanor’s beauty, her political achievements were often overlooked. She was able to secure an important trade deal with Constantinople while staying in what was then the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

Laurent’s training as a porcelain and miniature painter informed the handling of his later troubadour works, of which the present work is a fine example. Hailed by Vivant-Denon in 1804 as a painter of 'very delicate and very distinguished talent', Laurent typically drew his subjects from French medieval and Renaissance history.