Benouville first exhibited at the Salon in 1838, after studying under Picot, and he remained true to the academic tradition throughout his life. In 1845 he won the Prix de Rome. In 1852, after his return from Rome, he began submitting anecdotal history pieces and religious paintings to the Salons. He collaborated with Amaury Duval on the decoration of the church of Saint-Germaine-en-Laye.
This swooning figure is of St. Catherine of Siena, not St. Clare as claimed in the original catalogue of the Fodor Museum and in Aubrun. It is a preliminary study for a work entitled The Vision of St. Catherine of Siena, which exists in two identical grisaille versions, both rounded at the top. The two paintings came under the hammer at the atelier sale of 1859, and according to Burty they were Benouville’s only treatments of the subject. They display a considerable degree of foreshortening, which suggests that they were intended as altarpieces.
One was bought for 356 francs and presented to the church of Fère-en-Tardenois (Aisne). The other made 420 francs, and this is probably the version that was given to the Louvre in 1972, together with three related studies. Until recently this grisaille was also seen as a depiction of St. Clare, and it was accordingly catalogued by Aubrun as la communion mystique de Sainte Clare.
Benouville depicted several episodes from the lives of saints who were particularly popular in the nineteenth century, and this probably accounts for the incorrect identification. In 1858, for instance, he painted a St. Clare receivind the body of St. Francis of Assisi at the convent of the Sainte-Marie-des-Anges, which was shown at the Salon of 1859 and acquired by the Rotterdam collector, E.L. Jacobson. Benouville, who lived in Italy from 1846 to 1851, would have been familiar with images of St. Catherine of Siena, and he would undoubtedly have known Fra Bartelomeo’s Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, which had been hanging in the Louvre since 1800. St. Catherine, who was a menmer of the Dominican order, was singled out for the divine favor of the stigmata. Before her mystic marriage, Christ showed her the wound in his side, and this is the episode which Benouville depicted in the grisailles. The preliminary study shows Catherine with her lips parted in ecstasy.
An approximate date for the grisailles can be deduced from a letter which Benouville wrote to his brother in 1856. He reported that he had received a commission for a painting f St. Catherine kissing Christ’s wound, but that he would be first working on a St. Francis: “in a while I will be starting on a commission for a St. Catherine kissing Christ’s wound in a vision…, but before that there is my death of St. Francis.” It was probably not until 1859, the year of his death, that he turned to the subject of St. Catherine. The grisailles were still in his studio when he died, and he may well have been planning other versions.
The present sheet also featured in the Benouville sale, where it was bought by Lamme for 125 francs. Aubrun was unaware of the existence of this drawing, but she does list six other preliminary studies of the subject, including the three now in the Louvre, although she incorrectly identifies the subject as St. Clare.
Once again Benouville seems to have made numerous studies of the figures before embarking on the final composition. The sketches and the grisailles differ in the rendering of the saint’s clothing, but the variations appear to be nothing more than experiments with the traditional black and white habit of the Dominicans. The finished composition also includes St. Catherine’s attribute of the crucifix, which hangs from a ribbon or chain lying on the pages of the open book. The figure in the Fodor drawing is shown in exactly the same foreshortened pose as in the grisailles, where it has been enlarged three fold. The low stone wall and Christ’s raised arm can also be seen in the background.
( Wiepke Loos)
