JACQUES COURTOIS LE BOURGUIGNON (1621-1676)

Battle scene with horsemen at the foot of the ruins Large oil on canvas Size: 113 x 165 cm Condition reported: Worn, missing and restored around 1950 Provenance: Collection of the owner of Barenburg Castle in Lenzburg Since 1967, Swiss and Monte Carlo private collection Documentation: Invoice/certificate dated 1 March 1967 Biography : Jacques Courtois or Giacomo Cortese was a Franc-Comtois Jesuit friar, commonly known as the Burgundian of battles, il Borgognone or Giacomo Borgognone. He received his first painting lessons from his father, Jean Courtois. In 1636, in Milan, he joined a Comtois regiment in the service of the Spanish. These three years (1636-1639) had a profound influence on the theme of his paintings: military marches, sieges, encampments. His paintings are strikingly true. In 1640 he was in Rome where his first work made him known: The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (1641). After the death of his wife in 1654, he travelled and stayed in northern Italy, Bergamo and its region, and Venice, where he painted works for palaces and churches. In Siena, in 1657, Jacques Courtois asked to be admitted into the Society of Jesus. He was received as a coadjutor brother: he was then 36 years old. He was sent to Rome to do his novitiate at Sant'Andrea del Quirinale. In 1672, at the request of the Superior General, John Paul Oliva, he prepared sketches for the decoration of the apse of the church of the Gesù, but his declining health did not allow him to carry out this project. His self-portrait was commissioned by Cosimo III in 1675. It is kept in the Vasari Corridor of the Uffizi Museum in Florence. He died in Rome on 14 November 1676. Works conserved in the Louvre, the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace in Florence, the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, etc.