Jean-Baptiste Deshays was born near Rouen. He trained at Paris’s finest academies, spent four years studying in Rome and earned a reputation as one of France’s outstanding religious painters. This painting is one of his few mythological subjects. Until recently, it had been attributed to François Boucher, whose studio produced some of the most tantalizing mythological paintings of the 18th century. Though Deshays married Boucher’s daughter in 1758, and his father-in-law’s influence is evident in both his small pastoral paintings and his later drawings, the figures in this composition exhibit a monumental, sculptural sensibility that is characteristic of the younger artist. This painting is considered to be a fragment, as the object of the three women’s attention, which would have extended to the left, is no longer apparent. The painting appears to depict the penultimate moment in the affair between the god Jupiter and the mortal Sémélé, as described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Having discovered her husband Jupiter’s infidelity, a jealous Juno disguises herself as Sémélé’s nurse and persuades her to ask her lover to show himself in his godly form on their next rendezvous. On Jupiter’s next visit, Sémélé is consumed by the brilliant lightning and thunder of his true presence.
Details
- Artist Name: Jean-Baptiste Deshays de Colleville (French, 1729-1765)
- Title: Jupiter and Semele
- Date: c.1760
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 62-3/4 x 66-3/8 in. (159.4 x 168.6 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1970.04.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
Prince Paul Pavlovitch Demidoff, Principe di San Donato, (sale, Florence, 1880 March 15, lot 782).
Emile de Girardin (1806-1881), Paris (sale, Paris, Escribe and Cailleux, 1883 May 24-28, lot 3).
Private collection, Englewood, New Jersey, to;
[Ira Spanierman, New York, sold 1970 to;]
Norton Simon Foundation.
[on loan]
- Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, 1970-01-06 to
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1970-04-29 to
A Revolution of the Palette: The First Synthetic Blues and their Impact on French Artists
- Norton Simon Museum, 2015-07-17 to 2016-01-04
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and the Norton Simon Foundation_2
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1974-10-19 to 1976-06-15
The Expressive Body: Memory, Devotion, Desire (1400-1750)
- Norton Simon Museum, 2021-10-15 to 2022-03-07
- de Nolhac, Pierre, François Boucher, p. 127
- Ananoff, A., François Boucher, under no. 385, "Analogie" no. 6
- Slatkin, R., The Burlington Magazine, p. 118
- Eudel, Paul, L'Hotel Drouot et la Curiosité en 1883, 1884, p. 366
- MacFall, H., Boucher: the man and his times, his art, and his significance, 1908, p. 108
- Howe, Thomas C., Bulletin, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1968,
- Graham, F. L., Three Centuries of French Art, 1973, no. 5
- Michel, A., François Boucher, 1976, no. 349
- Bailey, C., The First Painters of the King, 1985, p. 133
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 715 p. 330
Image reproduction permission may be granted for scholarly or arts related commercial use. All image requests, regardless of their intended purpose, should be submitted via the reproduction request form.
Images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. Additional permission may be required.
Approved requests for the reproduction of an image will receive a contract detailing all fees and conditions of use of the image. Upon receipt of both the signed contract and full payment, the Office of Rights and Reproductions will provide the image. A complimentary copy of the published material must be provided to the Norton Simon Museum.