Gérard EDELINCK I (1640 - 1707) and Israël SILVESTRE (1621 - 1691): Israël Silvestre, draughtsman in the Cabinet du Roi and etcher
Price: € 1200
Engraving, 347 x 247 mm. Robert-Dumesnil 319, 3rd state (of 3).
Impression of the final state, with letter and with the view of Paris engraved by Israël Silvestre himself.
Very fine impression printed on laid paper. Generally in good condition, tiny thin area bottom and a 10 mm tear in the upper left corner.
A beautiful and fascinating portrait of Israël Silvestre, the only one engraved during his lifetime, and with his involvement, based on a pastel by Charles Le Brun.
Marianne Grivel analyses this portrait as follows: ‘Charles Le Brun was very close to the Silvestre family. He produced pastel portraits of Israël Silvestre and his wife, both shown from the waist up, which the printmaker kept until his death […]. It was this portrait by the artist that served as a model for Gérard Edelinck, an engraver originally from Antwerp who had been living in Paris since 1666 and was very close to Le Brun, whose compositions he engraved on several occasions. [...] He interpreted the pastel with his engraving tool, reducing and inverting it, thus producing the only engraved portrait of Israël Silvestre made during his lifetime. Edelinck’s engraving is undated, but it is likely that it was produced following Israël Silvestre’s admission to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on 6 December 1670. He is shown in a half-length portrait, turned towards the left within an oval frame. Edelinck skilfully captured the light falling on the face, whose intelligent gaze scrutinizes the viewer. As the letter indicates, it is not the printmaker but the draughtsman who is thus honoured—the man who had been drawing for the king the strongholds captured in eastern France since 1665, the master draughtsman to the pages of the Grande Écurie since 1667, and future master draughtsman to the Dauphin in 1673. His tools—compasses, set squares, pencils, engraving tools—and his drawings are depicted beneath the frame, half-hidden by a cartouche featuring a trompe l’œil depiction of a vast Parisian panorama taken from the Pont Barbier, a bridge which stood on the site of the Pont Royal between 1632 and 1684. Visible around the Seine are the Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie tower, the Hôtel de Ville, the dome of the Jesuit church (Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis), the Pont au Change and its houses, the Île du Palais, the Sainte-Chapelle, the towers of Notre-Dame, the Pont-Neuf and the Place Dauphine. This view partly replicates, with the exception, on the right bank, of the Louvre and the Grande Galerie, and, on the left bank, of the Hôtel de Brienne and the Hôtel de Nesle, that of a famous print by Israël Silvestre, Perspective of the City of Paris, Viewed from the Pont des Tuileries, which he etched in 1650 after a drawing by L. de Lincler. However, the Nesle Gate and Tower have disappeared, having been demolished in 1662 to make way for the Collège des Quatre-Nations, built by Le Vau.’ (Bénédicte Gady and Juliette Trey (ed.): La France vue du Grand Siècle: dessins d’Israël Silvestre (1621-1691), 2018; translated by us).