Left: Sphiron - Les Sept Merveilles du Monde (The Seven Wonders of the World)
Right: Pittacus - Les Sept Sages de La Grèce (The Seven Sages of Greece)
Oil on canvas; 191 x 151 inches; 49 x 38.8cm. (A pair)
Circa 1639-40
This pair of paintings derives from two lost drawings produced by Claude Vignon in 1639 for the series of engravings Sept Sages de La Grèce and Sept Merveilles du Monde (engr. by Couvay and Bosse). Sphiron (left) was the patron of Phidias’s Olympian Zeus (shown in the background of the engraving). The Greek ruler Pittacus of Mylene (650-570 BC) (right) was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Three other small scale paintings derived from the series, Artemise, Solon and Bias, are recorded in Vignon’s posthumous inventory.
Claude Vignon was born in Tours and was in Rome between c.1609 and 1623. His style developed from Caraviggism to an assimilation of Northern painters such as Rembrandt with a Venetian sense of colour. On his return to Paris he achieved great success at the court of Louis XIII as a painter and an illustrator, as well as fathering 34 children.