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- Titles The Sacrifice to Minerva (Descriptive)@Une mère faisant, par son fils et sa fille, porter des offrandes à l’autel de Minerve, déesse de la Sagesse (Proper)
- Artist Joseph-Marie Vien, French, 1716 - 1809
- Medium oil on canvas
- Dimensions 43 × 51 in. (109.2 × 129.5 cm) frame: 52 1/2 × 60 5/8 × 2 3/4 in. (133.4 × 154 × 7 cm)
- Credit Line Museum purchase with funds provided by the 1989 Museum Dinner and Ball, and the J. A. Vann Charitable Trust, in memory of James Allen Vann III, 1991.718
- Work Type painting
- Classification Paintings
- On View
- Signature Signed and dated: jo. m. vien. 1788
- Marks None
- Inscription Verso, horizontal strainer, yellow chalk: E 9856 Verso, vertical strainer, yellow chalk: E 9856 30 50 86 [illegible]
- Provenance Private collector (“Madame B”), by 1959 [see note 1]; auctioned at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 11, 1960, lot 124 [see note 2]. Private collection, London, by 1988 [see note 3]. Dealer Anna Maria Edelstein [see note 4]; consigned to dealer Colnaghi, New York; purchased by the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, April 29, 1991
1. Offered but unsold at Objets d’Art et de bel Ameublement, provenant de la collection de Madame B… et appartenant a Divers Amateurs, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, June 11-12, 1959, lot 132.
2. The catalogue raisonné entry for 1991.718 reports that the painting did not sell at auction in 1959 and reappeared at auction in 1960 (“elle est rachetée par son propriétaire et reparaît") from the same seller. Cf. Gaehtgens, Thomas W. and Jacques Lugand. Joseph-Marie Vien: Peintre du Roi. Paris: Arthena, 1988, no. 269.
3. 1991.718 was listed as in an anonymous collection in London in 1988 in Gaehtgens and Lugand, 1988, no. 269. It was later recorded as owned by an anonymous collector in London in the exhibition catalogue 1789: French Art During the Revolution. Edited by Alan Wintermute. New York: Colnaghi, October 10, 1989 - November 22, 1989, p. 289-292.
4. According to correspondence between Alan Wintermute, curator of a 1989 Colnaghi, New York exhibition that included 1991.718, and Jeremy Howard, Head of Academic Projects at the Colnaghi Foundation. See object file.