Dieu

In his Abecedario, Pierre-Jean Mariette passed a harsh judgement on Antoine Dieu: with his “drawings thrown into the same mould”, he would have been no more than a “practitioner”, who “used to give his figures very elongated proportions” and “who ran a picture shop on the Petit-Pont”. With Pierre Rosenberg’s pioneering article,¹ progress has been made in the study of the work of this artist who was more of a draughtsman than a painter, “above all a designer of images” as Marianne Paunet defines him in a more recent study of his drawings,² highlighting the rich links he forged with the world of printmaking. Indeed, through his many collaborations with engravers, the artist made a major contribution to enriching the imagery of this period, which was so prone to the use of allegory. Through the vivacity and inventiveness of his compositions, he also contributed to the evolution of style towards a new freedom and expressiveness at the beginning of the 18^th century.

Although few of his paintings have survived, Dieu won the Grand Prix of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1686 with Noah, his family and the animals enter the ark, a work now disappeared. Between 1700 and 1708, he was present at Versailles and took part in a number of projects, including the stained-glass windows in the Royal Chapel with Nicolas Bertin and Joseph Christophe. In 1710, he was commissioned to produce two cartoons for the set of tapestries on the History of the King: The Birth of the Duke of Burgundy on 6 August 1682 and The Marriage of Louis of France, Duke of Burgundy, and Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy on 7 December 1697, both of which are now in Versailles. A picture dealer as pointed out by Mariette, Dieu owned a shop called “Au grand monarque” located on the Petit-Pont. In 1718, to devote himself to his artistic production, he sold it to Edmé-François Gersaint, who kept the name and commissioned Watteau to make the famous shop sign.

Dieu worked on the sets for the Elements ballet performed at the Tuileries Palace on 22 and 31 December 1721. He was “reçu” (admitted) to the Royal Academy in 1722 with The Battle of Hannibal at Lake Trasimeno (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Appointed assistant professor at the Academy in 1724, he took part in the historical painting competition organised in 1727 by the Duke of Antin, with Horatius Coclès defending the Milvian Bridge, for which at least two composition studies exist, but he died before the results were known.

Neptune’s chariot is a subject often treated in engraving, as by Jean Lepautre for example, a contemporary engraver and frequent collaborator of Antoine Dieu. However, the pricking here suggests that it may have been conceived as a tapestry or embroidery project, which was probably not executed as the pouncing pattern has not been reddened on the reverse. We know that Dieu sometimes took part in tapestry projects and produced cartoons for famous sets, such as the History of the King, but also Narcissus and Echo for the set of the Metamorphoses woven at the Gobelins.

The graphic technique, which mixes red chalk with ink and wash, is typical of Dieu, an exuberant draughtsman who liked to combine different techniques to produce intense, pictorial results. The rounded lines with which he defines hair, waves and manes are entirely characteristic of his graphic style, as are the pronounced musculatures of his figures. This hitherto unpublished drawing is a fine addition to the body of his graphic works.