Charles Mellin

A. Brejon de Lavergnée, 'Réflexions sur l'activité des artistes français à Naples durant la première moitié du XVII^e siècle', in cat. exh. L'Âge d'Or de la Peinture à Naples: de Ribera à Giordano, Paris 2015, p. 87, fig. 3 (as here attributed to Charles Mellin).

Originally from Lorraine, Charles Mellin was twenty-five years old in 1623, when he joined Simon Vouet’s studio in Rome.

The present work, which undoubtedly depicts a female saint whose attributes are no longer visible, preventing her identification, may be compared to the St Margaret in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Hartford (inv. 1961.471). The young female saint in the American museum, formerly attributed to Simon Vouet and recently reattributed to Charles Mellin, has been associated with the commission for Angels bearing instruments of the Passion, on which Mellin also worked in about 1625–1627.