Michael Sweerts, les dernières années

• Autores: David Mandrella
• Localización: Revue de l'art, ISSN 0035-1326, Nº. 196, 2017, págs. 19-28
• Idioma: francés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Michael Sweerts, The Last Years.

    Michael Sweerts, a painter from Brussels, spent the first part of his career in Rome, where he painted genre scenes. When he returned to his native city in 1656, he opened an Academie du Dessin. In 1660, he signed up as lay missionary with the French Foreign Missions. This article tries to shed some light on the last years of his life. An unpublished document provides information about Sweerts' artistic activities in Alep, the first important city he visited with the group of missionaries after embarking in Marseilles. Despite the support of the Duchess d'Aiguillon, Sweerts was dismissed by the missionaries in Persia because of his insubordination and all trace of him is lost in India. Few aspects of his work permit us to guess the intense religiosity that inhabited this artist, except perhaps an engraved Lamentation. We have been able to identify a French missionary, Francois Deydier, in the famous double portrait by Sweerts in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Sweerts met him during his training in France following his religious involvement. A portrait, little known internationally, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseilles, provides us with precious evidence of his activity in the Near East, as does an engraving of his superior, François Pallu, executed after a lost painting by the artist either in Marseilles before his departure or in Alep.