Bands of brigands who populated the hills of southern Italy were steady fodder for the Romantic imagination, and their exploits were reported both factually and fancifully. In 1825–26 Cogniet painted three versions of this picturesque scene, in which the wife of a brigand examines a piece of silk just pillaged from unfortunate travelers. The first (private collection) was made for the amateur L. J. A. Coutan as a pendant for Mazzocchi, the portrait of an actual brigand chief by Cogniet’s late friend Achille-Etna Michallon; the second (private collection) was made for one Baron de Jassaud. Cogniet painted this version for himself, and he eventually acquired the painting by Michallon to accompany it.
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Artwork Details
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Title:The Italian Brigand's Wife
Artist:Léon Cogniet (French, Paris 1794–1880 Paris)
Date:ca. 1825–26
Medium:Oil on canvas, mounted on wood
Dimensions:9 7/8 x 8 1/8 in. (25.1 x 20.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:The Whitney Collection, Promised Gift of Wheelock Whitney III, and Purchase, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McVeigh, by exchange, 2003
Object Number:2003.42.10
Cogniet painted three versions of this subject. The primary version (private collection, New York) was executed by or in 1825 as a pendant to a painting by Achille-Etna Michallon depicting an Italian brigand, Mazzocchi (ca. 1820–22, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans). They were reproduced as a pair of engravings published in 1826. Both canvases formed part of the collection of modern French art assembled by the discriminating Parisian amateur Louis Joseph Auguste Coutan (ca. 1772–1830). He was undoubtedly Cogniet’s patron, although details of the commission remain unknown. The artist painted the second version (private collection, New York) more or less simultaneously with the first; the collector baron de Jassaud lent it to the influential exhibition "Ouvrages de peinture exposés au profit des Grecs," held at Galerie Lebrun, Paris, from May 17 until July 3, 1826.
Following the completion of the two 1825 versions of The Italian Brigand’s Wife (and unconstrained by the proportions of Mazzocchi) Cogniet reimagined his composition in the form it takes in the Metropolitan sketch, as a somewhat conventionalized independent picture. There are notable differences in the details: in the Coutan and Jassaud pictures, the looted trunk displays its contents to the viewer and beside it a postillion boot emerges from a suitcase, while in The Met's version the trunk is oriented toward the figure and the ghoulish boot is omitted. Also, in the reduced version the colors of the figure’s costume have changed and a dagger and powder flask have been added to the still life on the embankment behind her. Perhaps more significant, the figure here is smaller in relation to her surroundings and the landscape is more fully developed, if only marginally, suggesting that the artist may have considered working the sketch up into yet another, considerably larger version, perhaps for exhibition at the Salon.
Cogniet and Michallon had been intimate friends during a formative period of nearly four years spent in Italy together as pensionnaires of the French Academy in Rome. The former won the Grand Prix de Rome in the category of history painting in 1817, when the latter won the inaugural Prix de Rome for historical landscape, and they remained close until Michallon’s untimely death in 1822. Cogniet returned to Paris the same year and went on to enjoy a long and successful career as a Romantic painter of a largely academic stripe. The original Michallon-Cogniet pendants surfaced in the estate sale of a later owner, the Parisian collector Mainnemare, on February 21, 1843. Cogniet acquired Mazzocchi either at the auction or soon afterward, affording him the opportunity to pair it on his own walls with The Met's Brigand’s Wife—albeit somewhat awkwardly, owing to the difference in scale. He sold this third version in 1872 (see Provenance), but retained the Michallon until he died.
Asher Ethan Miller 2013
Inscription: Signed (lower right): L. Cogniet
the artist, Paris (until 1872; his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 20, 1872, no. 30, as “Femme de brigand italien, esquisse, 27 x 21 cm,” for Fr 290 to Bernelle); Bernelle (from 1872); Mary Crocker Alexander Whitehouse (until d. 1986); her estate (sale, William Doyle, New York, June 11, 1986, no. 16, as "Admiring the Silk," to Whitney); Wheelock Whitney III, New York (from 1986)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Path of Nature: French Paintings from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785–1850," January 22–April 21, 2013, unnumbered cat. (fig. 35).
Asher Ethan Miller. "The Path of Nature: French Paintings from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785–1850." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 70 (Winter 2013), pp. 31–32, 35, 44, 48 n. 30, fig. 35 (color).
Laura Bennett and Mark Brady. Pictures, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Collection of Matthew Rutenberg. Exh. cat., W. M. Brady & Co. New York, 2020, unpaginated, under no. 6, states that this version may have been intended for sale on the art market as an independent work, noting the high finish of the details.
Versions:
Oil on canvas, 13 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. (35.2 x 27 cm), signed (lower left): LC; private collection, New York. Painted for the Parisian collector Coutan as a pendant to Achille-Etna Michallon, Mazzocchi, ca. 1820–22, oil on canvas, 13 3/4 x 10 5/8 in. (35 x 27 cm), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans, inv. 1049. Both paintings were engraved by Georges Maile (English, active Paris 1824–40) in 1826.
Oil on canvas, 13 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. (35 x 27.3 cm), signed and dated (lower left): Leon Cogniet 1825; private collection, New York. Painted for the Parisian collector Jassaud.
Attributed to Léon Cogniet (French, Paris 1794–1880 Paris)
1828 or later
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