Three men, the one in the center is being disrobed and tied to a short pillar as he looks upward.
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

A muscular man on the left with an angry face holds and looks at the center man (Christ), pulling off his robe. Christ’s left arm is tied to a stone pillar on the right by another man leaning in from the right with the rope. A whip lies on the floor in front, behind them is a stone wall with barred window in the upper right with a few men looking into the scene. There’s a halo around Christ’s head as he looks to center above. All three men are bare foot with garments tied around their waists.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1984.595
People
Jacques Stella, French (Lyon 1596 - 1657 Paris)
Previously attributed to Nicolas Poussin, French (Les Andelys, France 1594 - 1665 Rome, Italy)
Title
Christ at the Column
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
c. 1635
Culture
French
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/295054

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Pen with brown ink, black chalk, gray wash, and white gouache on cream antique laid paper prepared with gray wash, framing lines in black ink, made up on all four sides to regular dimensions, laid down on a decorated mount
Dimensions
23.7 x 19.2 cm (9 5/16 x 7 9/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • watermark: none visible; drawing is laid down
  • inscription: old mount, verso, upper center, black ink: Poynter and Solomon colls.
  • inscription: verso, center, graphite: 193 / 945
  • inscription: verso, lower left, graphite: ssin (Nicholas) / ist at the Column, [illegible] the engraving
  • inscription: verso, lower right, graphite: Jacques Stella [underlined] / 1596-1657 / 99.1978 KES

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
The artist's estate; his niece, Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella, Paris, by descent; her cousin, Michel de Masso, Rome, by descent; Sir Edward J. Poynter, London (without his mark, L.874); his sale, Sotheby's, London, 24-25 April 1918, lot 232 (as copy after Nicolas Poussin); Mrs. Abraham Solomon, New York; her sale, Sotheby’s, London, 13 December 1966, lot 74; Germain Seligman, New York (his mark, L.3863, lower right); his wife, Mrs. Germain Seligman, New York, by descent; sold to Artemis, Luxembourg, with E. V. Thaw & Co., New York, David Carrit, Ltd., London, and Robert M. Light, Santa Barbara; Seiden and de Cuevas, Inc., New York; Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum, The Melvin R. Seiden Fund and Louis Haskell Daly Fund, 1984.595

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, The Melvin R. Seiden Fund and Louise Haskell Daly Fund
Accession Year
1984
Object Number
1984.595
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Jacques Thuillier, “Pour un Corpus Poussinianum", Nicolas Poussin: Colloques Internationaux, Sciences Humaines, ed. André Chastel, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris, 1960), pp. 49-238, p. 110-n.139
  • Jacques Seligmann, Master Drawings, exh. cat., Jacques Seligmann & Co. (New York, 1967), cat. no. 34, n.p.
  • Pierre Rosenberg, "Six tableaux de Plamondon d'après Stella, Cigoli, Mignard, et Jouvenet", Revue du Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal, Musée des Beaux-Arts Montréal (Montreal, 1971), vol. 8, March, pp. 10-13, p. 11
  • Pierre Rosenberg, French Master Drawings of the 17th & 18th Centuries in North American Collections / Dessins français du 17ème & du 18ème siècles des collections américaines, exh. cat., Secker & Warburg (London, 1972-1973), p. 213
  • Gail S. Davidson, "Some Genre Drawings by Jacques Stella: Notes on an Attribution", Master Drawings, Master Drawings Association (New York, 1975), vol. 13, no. 2, Spring, pp. 147-57, pp. 150-51
  • John Richardson, ed., The Collection of Germain Seligman: Paintings, Drawings and Works of Art, E. V. Thaw & Co., Artemis S.A., and David Carritt Ltd. (New York, Luxembourg, and London, 1979), cat. no. 75, n.p.
  • Hilliard T. Goldfarb, From Fontainebleau to the Louvre: French Drawing from the Seventeenth-Century, exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art/Indiana University Press (Cleveland, 1989), cat. no. 69 pp. 142-43
  • Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, Jean-Francois Méjanès, Alain Mérot, Margaret Morgan Grasselli, Sophie Raux-Carpentier, William W. Robinson, Marianne Roland Michel, and Pierre Rosenberg, Mastery & Elegance: Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, exh. cat., ed. Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 118, 361-n.11
  • Sylvain Laveissière and Gilles Chomer, Jacques Stella (1596-1657), exh. cat., Somogy Éditions d'Art (Paris, 2006), pp. 12-n.1, 171, 176-77
  • Jacques Thuillier, Jacques Stella, 1595-1657, Serge Domini Éditeur (Metz, 2006), pp. 158-59
  • Alvin L. Clark, Jr. and Edouard Kopp, French Drawings from the Age of Claude, Poussin, Watteau, and Fragonard: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2022), cat. no. 23, repr., detail repr. p. 83

Exhibition History

  • Master Drawings, Jacques Seligmann & Co., 11/04/1967 - 11/25/1967
  • From Fontainebleau to the Louvre: French Drawings from the 17th Century, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 12/13/1989 - 01/28/1990; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 02/24/1990 - 04/08/1990; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 05/06/1990 - 06/17/1990
  • Collecting for Harvard: Works Acquired through the Generosity of Melvin R. Seiden, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 07/03/1993 - 08/15/1993
  • 32Q: 2400 French/Italian/Spanish, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/04/2021 - 03/07/2022

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu