Michel-François Dandré-Bardon

Collection of Friedrich von Wolf-Ebenrod (1894-1920).

Barmen, Städtischen Ruhmeshalle, Sammlung F. von Wolff-Ebenrod: Kunstverein, June-July 1929, no. 86.

C. d'Ageville, Eloge Historique de Michel-François d'André-Bardon, Recteur de l'Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture..., Marseilles 1783, p. 33;

D. Chol, Michel François Dandré-Bardon ou l'apogée de la peinture en Provence au XVIII^e siècle, Aix-en-Provence 1987, p. 76, no. 6.

This moving work painted by the Aix-en-Provence artist Michel-François Dandré-Bardon had disappeared for centuries and was listed as such in his catalogue raisonné¹. Only the engraving realized via eau-forte by Dandré-Bardon himself, brilliant engraver and skillful painter, prompts us of its existence².

Finally, the painting resurfaced during the auction of the collection of German industrialist Friedrich von Wolf-Ebenrod, an admirer of fine paintings from the beginning of the preceding century and who had amassed various masterpieces between the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century.

If the canvas was dated by the art historian Chol around the year 1726, a signature, and a date on the lower right of this painting refines our knowledge of this endearing artist by placing this work shortly after the end of the French Regency in 1724.

1. D. Chol, Michel-François Dandré-Bardon, 1998, n°6

2. A multiple of this engraving is currently in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (France's national library), Christ Lying Dead at the Foot of the Cross (inv. FRBNF44545356)