Bibliography
Anne van de Sandt, preface by Catherine Lepdor, Les frères Jacques et François Sablet. Collections du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Les Cahiers du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne n° 19, 2015: n. 11.
Anne van de Sandt, “Jacques Sablet, Le Colin-Maillard”, in Bericht der Gottfried Keller-Stiftung 1977-1980, Berne, 1981: 53-56.
Pierre Rosenberg (ed.), De David à Delacroix : la peinture française de 1774 à 1830, exh. cat. Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, Ed. des Musées nationaux, 1974: 592.
This painting was shown at the Paris Salon in year V of the French Revolution (i.e. 1796) and purchased in 1798 by Napoleon’s uncle Joseph Fesch a few years before he was appointed a cardinal. Alongside his role in the church, Fesch was an art lover who was to become one of Europe’s greatest art collectors.
The work shares all the qualities that earned Jacques Sablet a reputation as a rival to Antoine Watteau in depicting fêtes galantes. The scene shows the same sorts of open-air amorous play as Watteau, but without the evocation of distant isles and dream-like atmosphere. Sablet simply captures the beauty and innocence of Italian country folk, framing their simplicity as a revival of the mores of Antiquity. The colours are bright, the silhouettes crisp; the atmosphere is warm and welcoming and the characters seem to be observed from life. Raking sunbeams fall on the portico, terraces and gardens of a Roman villa. You can almost feel the light breeze and hear the mandolin player plucking his strings and two women tapping on their tambourines.
Sablet here follows in the footsteps of Jean-Baptiste Pater, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Francisco de Goya in modernising the theme of blind man’s buff, traditionally associated with Flemish village scenes. A young man wearing a blindfold tries to catch two young women, while the two statues on the left perform the Judgement of Paris. The moral of the story is clear: love is blind.