PIERRE MIGNARD (1612-1695)

Time Clipping Cupid's Wings

Signed and dated, lower right : P. Mignard pinxit 1694/Ętatis 82.

French, 1694

Oil on canvas, 26 x 21 1/4 inches (66x 54cm.)

Pierre Mignard was trained in the studios of Jean Boucher and Simon Vouet but he established his reputation in Italy where he worked from 1635 to 1657. Few of his works from this period appear to have survived, however. After he returned to France he became the great rival of Charles Le Brun as the raging academic debate of the time focused on the two painters with Le Brun cast as the champion of drawing while Mignard represented the value of color. On Le Brun's death in 1690 Mignard succeeded him, assuming the extensive duties of First Painter to Louis XIV for an extraordinarily productive finale to his career.

The present canvas is a rarity in that most of Mignard's history paintings were architectural commissions which are now damaged or lost, leaving only portraits, many of questionable attribution, to represent a much larger oeuvre. On Mignard's death in 1695 the crown laid claim to work in the studio done since 1690 when he had become First Painter. Although many paintings were returned to the artist's family about three hundred drawings were retained for the royal collections and are now in the Louvre. Among them are three previously unidentified sheets preparatory to Time Clipping Cupid's Wings.

A personal message may underlie Mignard's interpretation of Time in the role of a strong but caring parent effectively "grounding" a rambunctious toddler who is specifically identified as the god of love by the inclusion of Cupid's small bow and quiver. There is a second version having variations in the position of the hour glass and quiver, but of the same size and date, in a private collection. [It was not unusual for Mignard to repeat a subject; e.g. The Woman of Samaria commissioned by Mlle de Guise in 1681 (North Carolina Museum of Art), repeated for the King in 1690 (Louvre), and 1691 (Pavlovsk).] It has been proposed that Mignard painted the two versions of Time Clipping Cupid's Wings for his two sons as a painterly farewell statement at the close of his life. This hypothesis is supported by the unusual addition of "Ętatis 82" specifying the artist's age after the signature and date.

In his last years Mignard understandably devoted considerable attention to the theme of Time. It was one of the four subjects he prepared for the important royal commission of ceiling decorations for the Cabinet des Coquilles at Versailles. The canvas "no. 380 oł est peint le Temps avec un enfant" was listed among the items claimed by the King from Mignard's studio after his death. The painting of an anguished Father Time holding a huge scythe as if struggling to rise from a semi-recumbent position among the clouds, accompanied by a putto displaying an hour glass from his confident perch on a higher cloud, has been in the Grenoble Museum since 1799. Antoine Schnapper noted "It is this composition which seems to have given Mignard the most trouble and for which the most numerous drawings are preserved" ("Two Ceilings by Mignard, The Art Bulletin, vol. LVI, no. 1 March 1974). The many preparatory studies in the Louvre reveal Mignard's struggle with the depiction of Time as an unhhappy old man, cast down, at a distinct disadvantage in regard to the attendant putto. In the present canvas we see the artist freed of the constraints of an official commission and finding a personally satisfying solution by reinterpreting Time as a loving father who judiciously asserts parental control.