Important painting by Francesco Hayez thought to be missing found. It will now go to auction

An important addition to the catalog of Francesco Hayez (Venice, 1791 - Milan, 1882), the greatest artist of ItalianRomanticism: it is a painting depicting Louis XIV and Mademoiselle de La Vallère, an 1838 work that was thought to be missing and that one of the leading art experts of the period, art historian Fernando Mazzocca, identifies with a painting by Hayez that was exhibited in 1838 at the Brera Academy under the title La Vallère: at the time, the owner was collector Antonio Repossi of Chiari. The work will go up for auction next June 16 at Il Ponte House.

The scene Hayez depicts in the painting is of a meeting between the King of France and the courtesan Louise de la Vallère, who was his favorite mistress for some time. A woman so famous that she even became the protagonist of literary works: in 1804, in fact, the writer Stéphanie Félicité du Crest, countess of Genlis, gave to the presses a novel entitled La duchesse de la Vallière suivie de sa vie penitente, which had a very large fortune. And Hayez’s painting had to have a certain amount of luck as well, so much so that another version is also known, dating from around 1857, executed for Marquis Antonio Busca (and who already boasted another Hayez painting, the 1844 Galatea, in his collection). The 1857 version, however, is known only from an engraving by Domenico Gandini based on a drawing by Angelo Trezzini: instead, it has now been possible to find Hayez’s original prototype on the subject of Louis XIV’s mistress. The subject, explains Fernando Mazzocca, was very popular in France, and in Italy it was first brought to Italy in the early 1920s by Giovanni Migliara (Alessandria, 1785 - Milan, 1837) and later taken up by other artists.

To corroborate the identification, Mazzocca cites a review of the 1838 exhibition written by Ignazio Fumagalli and published in the journal Biblioteca italiana: it states that the painting depicts “Louis XIV penetrating the enclosure of Charity to draw his mistress from it. This kneeling adheres with the missing to a column repulsing the monarch [...]. But the affectionate contrast of that illustrious repentant, the composure of a wondering and pensive nun in the middle of the picture, and the harmony of the whole painting make this little work one of the most precious ornaments of our exhibition.” The description matches what is seen in the painting that will go to auction. Moreover, the work was highly appreciated at the time.

“Leaving the description of the setting in the background, where a cloister is glimpsed with the figures of the nuns barely hinted at,” writes Fernando Mazzocca in the catalog entry, “Hayez preferred to concentrate on the depiction of the main characters: the two lovers and a figure, who assumes a certain prominence, a pensive witness to the affair. As on the scene of a melodrama of the time, the two protagonists appear posed, expressing with their gestures and gaze their feelings and the contrast that divides them. Hayez thus confirms himself as an unsurpassed interpreter of the passions, but also as a superb director attentive to all the elements, from the rendering of the environment to that of the costumes, rendered with great fidelity. But precisely the costumes are then an opportunity to demonstrate his own pictorial skill entrusted to an extraordinary sense of chromatic variations.”

The painting had been lost track of: it was recently identified among the possessions of a private collector who, moreover, did not know he had such an important work. “It often happens that private collectors have among their subjects works of which they do not know how to recognize the value, so it is very important to rely on experts,” Matteo Gardonio, head of the Department of Paintings and Sculptures of the 19th and 20th centuries at Ponte, which organized the auction at Palazzo Crivelli in Milan on June 16, told Ansa. “This oil on canvas had by then been given up for lost, finding it again a great joy, it is especially striking for its chromatic iridescence, used in the clothing and costumes of the period.” The auction will start with an estimate of 38-40,000 euros.

Image: Francesco Hayez, Louis XIV and Mademoiselle de La Vallère (1838; oil on canvas, 70 x 95 cm)

Important painting by Francesco Hayez thought to be missing found. It will now go to auction

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