(Nîmes 1700–1777 Castel Gandolfo)
Diana, as a young shepherdess
signed lower left: Natoire f.,
black chalk with white gouache highlights on beige prepared paper, 26 x 36 cm, framed

Provenance:
Jean-Denis Lempereur collection (1701–1779), Paris (according to the mark lower right);
his sale, Paris, 24 May – 28 June 1773, lot 579 (‘Deux jolis dessins sur papier gris, qui représentent chacun une bergère’);
Andrea Busiri Vici collection, Rome;
thence by descent to the present owner

Exhibited:
Rome, Palazzo Braschi, I Francesi a Roma, May – July 1961, no. 596a;
Rome, Palazzo Braschi, L’Accademia di Francia a Roma, December 1966 – January 1967, no. 96;
London, Royal Academy of Arts, France in the eighteenth century, 6 January – 3 March 1968, no. 487

Literature:
I francesi a Roma. Residenti e viaggiatori nella Città Eterna dal Rinascimento agli inizi del Romanticismo, ed. by C. Pietrangeli, exhibition catalogue, Rome 1961, p. 257, no. 596a, pl. XXI;
C. Pericoli Ridolfini in: L’Accademia di Francia a Roma, exhibition catalogue, Rome 1966, p. 31, no. 96;
France in the eighteenth century, exhibition catalogue, London 1968, p. 100, no. 487;
A. Schiavo, Palazzo Mancini, Palermo 1969, p. 217 and fig. 134;
A. Busiri Vici d’Arcevia, Scritti d’Arte, ed. by B. Jatta, Rome 1990, pp. 341-342, fig. 8;
S. Caviglia-Brunel, Charles-Joseph Natoire 1700–1777, Paris 2012, p. 299, no. D.296

The present drawing once belonged to Jean-Denis Lempereur (1701–1779), a diamond merchant and collector of Master drawings (see F. Lugt, Les Marques de Collections de Dessins & d’Estampes, L. 1740). The present drawing’s mount, with a blue outline bordered by a gold band, is also a characteristic of his collection. In the 1773 sale catalogue of the collection, a pair of drawings of shepherdess’ can be identified with the present drawing, the other has been lost (see S. Caviglia-Brunel, Charles-Joseph Natoire 1700–1777, Paris 2012, p. 495, *D. 941).

During the twentieth century, the present drawing of a Shepherdess belonged to the Roman collection of the art historian Andrea Busiri Vici, who published the present work in his volume Scritti d’Arte (see op. cit. Busiri Vici, 1990).

The present drawing displays the artists ability to unite a rococo sensibility with that of classicism. The grace that emanates from this feminine effigy, derives from Natoire’s ability to unify elements of the Roman and Emilian academic tradition, with the brio of French rococo decorative painting, from which the theme of the ‘shepherdess’ ultimately derives (see op. cit. Busiri Vici, 1990, p. 343).

In the present scene, Diana, the goddess of hunting, is not presented with her usual austere appearance as a huntress. Instead, she is depicted as a sensuously graceful shepherdess, reclining and at rest in a shady dell. It is on account of the French artist’s choice to represent the divinity in this guise that some of the critics have been led to describe the subject as a Shepherdess (see op. cit. Pietrangeli, 1961; op. cit. Pericoli Ridolfini, 1966; op. cit. Busiri Vici, 1990; op. cit. Caviglia-Brunel, 2012).

Charles-Joseph Natoire was a contemporary of Boucher and obtained the Prix de Rome at an early stage of his training within the French academic system, allowing him access to Rome where he moved under the protection of the Marquis de Vandières, later Marquis de Marigny. The appeal of his compositions, and his ability to paint in the grand manner, as well genre scenes, rapidly gained him recognition in Roman circles. In 1730 Natoire returned to Paris, but twenty years later in 1751, he settled again in Italy, having been appointed as the director of the French Academy in Rome.