Artist: SUBLEYRAS Title: COMTESSE OF ST MACCARY Technique: oil on canvas Measurements: 80 x 63 cm Provenance: Important collection BIOGRAPHY: He was born in Saint-Gilles (Gard, France) and was a student of his father and later of Antoine Rivalz in Toulouse. In 1726 he studied at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris and won the Rome Prize in 1727. In 1728 he went on a scholarship to Rome, where he developed an intense activity as a portraitist and painter of genre scenes and sumptuous altarpieces. He painted different subjects, including portraits (Benedict for example, Saint Benedict Resurrecting a Gardener's Son, today in the church of Saint Frances Romana in Rome), which present a much more serious air than most French works of the Rococo period. His most famous work is the Mass of Saint Basil, painted for St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, but currently housed in the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels and Martyrs in Rome. The enormous painting was immediately acclaimed after being presented in 1748, but Subleyras died the following year, before he could know the success of his work. He later became a partially underrated figure, but a major exhibition of his work in Paris and Rome in 1987 contributed greatly to his recognition as one of the most prominent French painters of his time.

This is in very good condition