Louis I BOULLOGNE (1609 - 1674) - The Annunciation

Attributed to Louis I BOULLOGNE (Paris, 1609 - Paris 1674)

The Annunciation

Circa 1640-1645.
Oil on copper
L: 77.5; H: 59 cm

This scene of the Annunciation depicts the Virgin Mary surprised during her prayers by the arrival of the angel Gabriel, carrying a lily branch, her attribute, and draped in a fabric with golden highlights. The two figures are frozen in a dynamic gesture. The Virgin shows a look of surprise as the archangel approaches her, his hair caught in a gust of wind and mingling with his cloak. Mary, dressed in red and black, adopts a humble and serene posture. The space is structured with classical architectural elements in the background and the presence of putti and the Holy Spirit, which accentuate the sacred aspect of the scene.
The work is a true milestone in art history, as it lies at the center of a network of influences representative of the early days of the French Academy in Rome, founded in 1666.

Our copperplate is most certainly one of the first works executed by Louis Boullogne in Paris after his return from Italy. It is both a testament to his apprenticeship in Italy and a work that forms part of the artist's body of work.
The overall style, and more particularly the vibrant drapery of the Virgin's costume, can also be admired in a Cephalus and Proscris painted on panel and recently returned to the artist. The panel, which is similar in execution to a copperplate, provides a better understanding of Boullogne's style on this type of medium and not just on canvas.
The physiognomy of the characters in the Annunciation, particularly certain very characteristic facial features, can also be found in other works by Boullogne. For example, the unusual face of the Virgin Mary is echoed in that of the woman on the right in Boullogne's Tobit Restoring His Father's Sight, kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux.
As for the winged cherubs, with their large foreheads and compact features at the bottom of their faces, they remain a recurring motif throughout the artist's career. They can be seen in his ink Deposition and his Charity in the Louvre Museum, although the cherub in the Charity in the Poitiers Museum is an even more striking example.

Finally, there is a preparatory drawing of a woman's head whose veil and facial features are identical to those of our Virgin. On the same sheet, several heads of very young children are also sketched. Two of them were used by the painter as preparatory models for the children surrounding his Christian Charity.

Louis Boullogne left for Rome in 1634 and returned to Paris at an unknown date. His return took place between 1637, when he engraved Guido Reni's The Rape of Helen in Rome, and 1641, when he married in Paris in February. It is more likely that he left Rome in 1640, like many of his fellow painters. In the spring of 1640, Roland Fréart de Chambray and his brother traveled to Rome on the orders of Sublet de Noyers, superintendent of buildings for King Louis XIII, to bring several artists residing in Rome to France, notably Nicolas Poussin.
Through its many influences and pictorial tributes, Louis de Boullogne's Annunciation, which he painted shortly after his return to France, allows us to trace his artistic career in Italy. In addition to Rome, Boullogne also visited Venice, probably for a brief visit on his return journey. As evidence of this stay, Boullogne engraved Veronese's Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Thus, his Annunciation, both in composition and color, is inspired by Titian's, preserved in the church of San Salvador in Venice.
As for the poses of the protagonists, whether the Angel, the Virgin, or even the cherubs, they are all based on models observed in Andrea Sacchi's studio in Rome. Could it be that Boullogne was influenced by the famous Poussin, his compatriot who frequented Sacchi's studio from 1631 onwards, and chose to gravitate towards the latter during his stay in Rome? It is likely that this was the case.
Thus, visible in the upper part of a pen drawing by Sacchi depicting the Death of the Virgin, two skillfully intertwined cherubs are also present in the Annunciation. He appropriates, by inverting the figure, a Tobias and the Angel, which was probably the work of a pupil in Sacchi's studio. Sacchi himself had reused and enriched a secondary motif from his master, a statuette of an angel visible in his Allegory of Rome, executed in the 1620s. Boullogne was also undoubtedly inspired by the figure of the Virgin taken from a preparatory red chalk drawing for an engraving of the Annunciation by the young Carlo Maratta, who joined Sacchi's workshop in 1636. Boullogne reuses the motif with great accuracy, from the posture to the costume, and changes the facial features.
Unusually for a work from the first half of the 17th century, our Annunciation is mentioned in the archives only a few years after its execution and can be linked to a private patron outside the aristocracy. It appears in the inventory after the death of Germé Doüay, a Parisian bourgeois who died on July 16, 1659.
We find the first mention of Germé Doüay in the context of the Ten Years' War as advisor to the King and extraordinary controller of wars in the Valtellina army between 1634 and 1635. He then settled in Switzerland, in Solothurn, becoming clerk to the treasurer of the Leagues, Claude du Ryer, who had held this position since January 1637[3].

At the end of 1642, which saw the death of Claude du Ryer, there is no further mention of Germé Doüay in Switzerland. It is therefore likely that he returned to Paris at that time.
Germé Doüay became a citizen of Paris and met Geneviève de Boullogne, a young widow and sister of the painter Louis de Boullogne. Without ever marrying, the two quickly formed a couple and lived on the third floor of a house on the Place de la Grève. Upon Germé's death on July 16, 1659, Geneviève was named his sole heir to his movable property and received a life annuity of 400 livres[5]. This sum, which was significant for the time, attests to Doüay's financial wealth. Thanks to his fortune and his status as the artist's “brother-in-law,” Doüay most certainly commissioned several paintings from Louis de Boullogne.
His post-mortem inventory lists a series of paintings:
"The thirteen cantons depicted in portraits of women, four copies of the four seasons of the year, the map of the city of Solothurn, a small Jesus in a landscape, the portrait of Pope Innocent X without its frame, the portrait of Mr. de Mauroy, two small paintings on copper, framed in black wood, one depicting the Annunciation and the other the Assumption, the portraits of King Louis XIII and Mons[sieur], two portraits of the same person as a nun and a laywoman... "
The authorship of the works not listed in the inventory is unknown, but some may have been painted by Boullogne. This is most likely the case for our painting and its companion piece, described in the inventory as “paintings on copper, framed in black wood, one depicting the Annunciation and the other the Assumption.”

[1] Simonetta Proesperi Valenti Rodino, Drawings by Carlo Maratti in the collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf at the Kunstpalast, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2024, cat. 371.
[2] Édouard Rott, Summary inventory of documents relating to the history of Switzerland, Part V, Bern, Imprimerie S. Collin, 1894, p. 81.
[3] Édouard Rott, Summary inventory of documents relating to the history of Switzerland, Part IV, Bern, Imprimerie S. Collin, 1891, p. 763
[4] Ibid., p. 613.
[5] “Were the Parisian painters Bon, Jean, and Louis Boullongne originally from Arras, Picardy, or Beauvais?” in Bulletin de la société historique de Compiègne, Vol. XXIII, Chauny, A. Baticle, 1948, p. 128.

Illustrations:
Louis Boullogne; detail from Cephalus and Proscis; oil on panel; Caen, Museum of Fine Arts

Louis Boullogne; detail from Tobias Restoring His Father's Sight; oil on canvas; Bordeaux, Museum of Fine Arts

Louis Boullogne; detail from The Lamentation of Christ; ink and pen on paper; Paris, Louvre Museum

Louis Boullogne; Head Studies; white and black chalk on paper; private collection.

Louis Boullogne; detail from Christian Charity; oil on canvas; Tajan auction, December 18, 2019.

Titian (1490-1576), The Annunciation, oil on canvas, circa 1535, 166x266cm, Scuola Grande di San Rocco (Venice).