Monday, January 30, 2017

17th-century Faces by Daniel Dumonstier

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of young man with blond hair
1640
charcoal, colored chalks
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of man wearing a beauty spot
1632-33
charcoal, colored chalks
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700 is an authoritative sourcebook by our good friend Anthony Blunt, whose grasp of the subject is famous for balance and clarity. Coming across Daniel Dumonstier's amazing portrait-drawings at the Hermitage (as above) I was keen to see what Blunt had said about this artist I had somehow overlooked until the present. Yet Art and Architecture in France accorded poor Dumonstier only the briefest of mentions (not even in the text, but in a footnote)  "The sixteenth-century style of portrait-drawing continues in Daniel Dumonstier."


Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of Cardinal d'Ossat
before 1646
charcoal, colored chalks
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait, possibly young Anne of Austria
1615
charcoal, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of the Duc de Montmorency
ca. 1630
charcoal, colored chalks
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of unknown woman
ca. 1620
charcoal, colored chalks
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of a cleric
before 1646
charcoal, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of Madame de Bouchepiscot
before 1646
charcoal, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of unknown young man
before 1646
charcoal, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of unknown woman
before 1646
charcoal, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of unknown man
before 1646
charcoal, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of unknown woman 
before 1646
drawing, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Portrait of unknown woman
before 1646
charcoal, colored chalks
British Museum

Daniel Dumonstier
Bust of Cardinal Rochefoucault
1624
charcoal, colored chalks
Art Institute of Chicago