The Visitation – Large Oil on Canvas – France 1820-1830

“The Visitation”. Oil on canvas sewn in three very large parts (3.03m x 1.81m) representing the Visitation of Elizabeth to Mary. The Visitation commemorates an episode from the Gospel according to Luke (Lk 1:39-45): the visit that Mary, pregnant with Christ, pays to her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist. French work, formerly attributed to Alexandre-François Caminade (1783-1862), which is part of the current of the renewal of religious painting in France, from 1800. After the troubled period of the Revolution, a search for spirituality emerges and sees a rehabilitation of religious painting, supported by the state and its public commissions. The Christic and Marian figures, the cult of the Virgin, of the Rosary, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, take on new impetus. The greatest painters then flourish in this revival of the genre: Ingres, the Flandrin brothers, Amaury-Duval, Chassériau, the Balze brothers, Poppleton, Montessuy, and so many others..

We turn to the masters of Italian Renaissance (which strongly influenced our painter) for iconography and space.

Original canvas .