Abdon and Sennen bury the Christian martyrs

Abdon and Sennen bearing off for burial the early Christian martyrs: two men carrying to the right a dead body lying on a sheet, another dead body lies on the ground at left, and at right a boy holds a torch, city walls are behind them.

Etching, circa 1656/57, lettered in the margin 'Heu ad omnes abominationes malorum domus Israel quia peste ruituri sunt. Ezechiel VI' and signed at right 'Gul.mo Cortese pinxit et sculp.'.

Example of the first state of three, or second of four, before the Arnold van Westerouth address. A proof state, without letter, is known.

After Cortese's own fresco in the nave of San Marco, the Venetian church in Rome. This fresco cycle was undertaken by the pupils of Pietro da Cortona, under his direction, in the 1650s, and showed scenes from the life of St Mark and of the early Christian martyrs Abdon and Sennen. The lettering, added later, changes the interpretation of the scene to the plague of Israel described by Ezechiel.

Magnificent work, rich in tones, printed on contemporary laid paper, irregularly trimmed to the copperplate, horizontal printing fold, otherwise in excellent condition.

“Led by the torch of a young boy, Saints Abdon and Sennen, two young Persians recently converted to Christianity, strain to carry the body of a fellow Christian to burial. One saint has his head bent in reflection, while the other, struggling to support the heaviest part of the martyr's body, looks down behind him to observe the next corpse that will have to be interred, although it is already well into the night. This poignant scene records one of the two works executed for his first major commission by the young Guillaume Courtois, when he was still a member of Pietro da Cortona's atelier. It was painted in the nave of the Basilica of San Marco in Rome (1654-56), which he and other young artists from Cortona's studio decorated with scenes from the life of Saint Mark and his early Christian contemporaries under the direction of the master. The fresco brought Courtois a great deal of attention, ensuring future commissions in San Marco and elsewhere." This success, combined with the outbreak of the plague in Rome in 1656, may have led him to etch his composition - with an inscription from one of the prophet Ezekiel's apocalyptic visions - which has caused frequent confusion over the subject depicted.

The achievement of the fresco and the etching results from Courtois's already authoritative command of form and design. He was a prolific draftsman, whose hand reveals the influence of his teacher as well as other contemporaries, such as Pier Francesco Mola, Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, Giovanni Lanfranco, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Here, in a very powerful way, he has expanded upon a borrowed motif from Raphael via Poussin, and if the new force and meaning he hoped to bring to the figural group is no longer visible in the damaged fresco, it is brilliantly demonstrated by the lively facture of his extant oil sketch, and the aggressive hatching of his print. Unlike his predecessors, Courtois has plunged these figures into a shadowy obscurity. His choice of a nocturnal setting may be an attempt to simulate both the darkness of man's actions and the remorse generated by their aftermath.

The monumental figure group is thrust diagonally into the foreground, and the fusion of the emphatic contours and the white of the sheet provides a palpable volume and a large, slow rhythm. Regular crosshatching, as well as open and vigorously directional hatching juxtaposed against a few rare, unetched spaces cause the figures to appear to emerge from an animated darkness, and the entire surface of the sheet vibrates with energy. Courtois attempted to imitate the exuberant facture and saturated Venetian coloration of his well-received painting. These overtly baroque and italianate traits in an artist who arrived in Italy at a young age might lead one to think of him as entirely Italian. However, the slight, momentary curtailment of motion that we sense in the classicizing figures, the lack of a one-point perspective, and the gestures or movements repeated in successive planes of the composition, all signify the French base of his transnational visual culture” (cf. French Prints from the Age of the Musketeers, pp. 197-199).

The painter Guillaume Courtois was born to an artistic family of Franche-Comté, which had been part of the ancient duchy of Burgundy and was acquired by France in 1678. By 1640, he and his older brother Jacques, also a painter, were in Rome, where they resided for most of their lives. Both artists-called "Cortese" in Italian-have been referred to as "il Borgognone," as wat their compatriot François Perrier. Guillaume entered the studio of Pietro da Cortona and assisted this master of the high baroque with frescoes in Roman churches: he also worked For Gianlorenzo Bernini. He then continued independently, receiving numerous commissions for Roman churches and palaces as a painter of history, mythology. and battle scenes, as well as religious subjects. He frequently collaborated with his brother and with Gaspari Dughet, the brother-in-law of Nicolas Pousin, who was a landscape painter and etcher. In 1647 Courtois was admitted to the Accademia de San Luca in Rome. Seven etchings can be attributed to him, most of them repro duce paintings by earlier Italian artists such as Veronese and Tintoretto. Only the broadly executed Saints Abdan and Sennen is his own design, though it was derived from a figure group used by both Raphael and Poussin.

Bibliografia

Robert-Dumesnil, Le Peintre-Graveur Français (I.213.1); Sue Welsh Reed, French Prints from the Age of the Musketeers, pp. 197-199, n. 105; 'Pietro da Cortona', Palazzo Venezia Rome, 1997, p. 224.