Currently not on view
Love Fleeing Slavery,
1789
Joseph-Marie Vien, French, 1716–1809
2001-179
In 1788 the Duc de Brissac commissioned from Vien a pendant for what was perhaps his most famous work, The Cupid Seller (1763). He planned to give the pair to his mistress Madame du Barry, the former lover of King Louis XV. The artist probably presented this oil sketch to his patron for approval before beginning the canvas. The duke must have endorsed the composition, for the finished work reflects the sketch in most details. The finished painting was well received at the 1789 Salon, the French Academy’s annual exhibition of art by its members. De Brissac and his love were both guillotined during the French Revolution, which erupted the same year that the sketch was made.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Love Fleeing Slavery
Dates
1789
Maker
Medium
Oil on paper laid on canvas
Dimensions
20.2 x 25.3 cm (7 15/16 x 9 15/16 in.)
frame: 34.7 x 38.8 x 5.4 cm (13 11/16 x 15 1/4 x 2 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Felton Gibbons Fund and Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund, in honor of Duane Wilder, Class of 1951, with gratitude for his dedicated service as chairman of the Museum Advisory Council
Object Number
2001-179
Culture
Materials
Subject
Gabriel-Auguste Godefroy; Godefroy sale, Paris, 14 December 1813, lot. 126; probably purchased at this sale by a descendant of the Duc de Brissac as a souvenir of teh prestigious commission; by descendant to the family; Emanuel Moatti, New York and Paris.
- "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2001," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 61 (2002): p. 101-142., p. 124
- Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Russell Stockman, ""Love fleeing slavery": a sketch in the Princeton University Art Museum," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 65 (2006): p. 12–21., p. 12, fig. 1; p. 19, fig. 7
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 313 (illus.)
- Jane K. Brown, "The monstrous rights of the present: Goethe and the humanity of Die Zauberflote", Opera quarterly 28, no. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 2012): p. 5-19.
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 365
