Lubin Baugin

LUBIN BAUGIN (Pithiviers, ca. 1612 - Paris, 1663).
"Virgin of the Pietà". France, early 17th century.
Oil on canvas.
Exhibited in the exhibition on the painter organized at the Museums of Orleans and Toulouse, 2002.
Published in the catalog raisonné of the painter, N'87. p. 226.
In good condition.
Measurements: 59 x 45 cm; 83 x 69 cm (frame).

The nickname by which Lubin Baugin was known among his contemporaries, "Little Guido", is more than justified in this canvas, where the concomitances between this magnificent Virgin and the feminine figures of Guido Reni are remarkable. The faint rapture imprinted on the face of the Dolorosa, with imploring eyes and in silent dialogue with the Lord, recalls the Virgin in Reni's Assumption. The solidity of the modeling and the silvery reflections are also influenced by Bolognese classicism. But other sources can also be appreciated: the imprint of Parmigianino is evident in the way of placing the fine-fingered hand on the heart. On the other hand, the composition shows genuine elements of the author, which only respond to his own genius: the stormy density of the sky as a transcript of the compassionate mood of the Pious One, as well as the exquisiteness with which the pathos contained in the expression and the draping of the veil is resolved. Baugin showed special mastery in the Marian representations, in which he interpreted with great creative freedom the Renaissance and Mannerist legacy of the Italians. In his work, the teachings of Raphael, but also those of the School of Fontainebleau, are present. Comparable examples of this devotional painting can be found in the Musée de Reims and the Louvre.

Lubin Baugin was a renowned French painter of religious works. He received the nickname "Le Petit Guide" (the little Guido) because of the influence of Guido Reni on his painting. Nothing is known of his early training, but by 1629 he was already in Paris, where on May 23 he was appointed a member of the artists' guild of the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. During the second half of the 1630s he traveled in Italy, where he studied the works of Raphael, Correggio, Parmigianino, Barocci and Guido Reni, and finally settled in Rome, where he married the first of his three wives. In 1641 he returned to Paris, where he settled with his family in a house on the Pont Nôtre-Dame. Baugin joined the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1645 and the newly created Académie Royale in 1651. By 1657 he was already painter to the young King Louis XIV. Like other artists of his generation, his style is strongly influenced by the art of the School of Fontainebleau, and by a marked mannerist tendency appreciable both in his taste for elongated bodies and in the curved rhythms of his compositions, as well as in the slightly acid coloring of his paintings, an influence received from his master Simon Vouet, who familiarized him with Italian painting. Among his most important works are religious canvases such as Virgin with Child and St. John (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy), and Nativity of Mary (Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence). "The Five Senses," his celebrated still life, is an exception to his preference for sacred subjects. In the Louvre Museum there is a Holy Family of his.