Louis Licherie
Houdan 1629-Paris 1687
Allegory of Europe
Inscribed v. in red chalk at lower right.
Red chalk, framing marks in red chalk, laid on carton.
127 x 225 mm – 5 x 8,86 in.
Provenance – Unidentified collector’s mark lower right (L. 3988).
A pupil of Louis de Boullogne and Charles Lebrun, Licherie is one amongst the latter’s pupils to have had a flourishing independant career. Appointed director of the Gobelins drawing school before being received at the Royal Academy in 1679, he executed many private decors in Paris and Houdan, as well as numerous works for religious institutions, such as the Bourgfontaine charterhouse, in collaboration with Claude II Audran and Antoine Bouzonnet-Stella.
A drawing of similar technique and dimension representing an Allegory of America is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (59.208.105, gift Estate James Hazen Hyde, 1959). Both of them are small designs, preparatory to a series of prints of larger dimensions on the theme of the Continents.The Bibliothèque Nationale de France owns a set. The drawings bear interesting differences with the prints, particularly in the choice of the allegory’s accessories.
Condition report – Glued on a later mount. Traces of foxing. Small tear in upper right corner.
