Scipio returning to Allutius his Betrothed

(Jean Restout)

Jean Restout was the most important member of the famous family of painters, art historians, and architects. He was an important contributor to history painting in France, according to the Academy the highest achievement of an artist. Here he chooses for his theme an extremely popular subject of the day (and one which foreshadows the preoccupation with noble themes in the later . Neoclassical painters),, the ‘Continence of Scipio’. The picture was intended to be a companion to ‘The Farwell of Hector and Andromeda,, another favourite subject and one also frequently used by later Neoclassicists. This picture was formerly in the Vesier Collection, now lost (ref. Messelet, op. cit., 141. and Rouen 101, 1727), and both pictures, after exhibition at the Salon in 1728, passed into the Callone sale of the 21st of April 1788.

Rauceby Hall, Lincolnshire.

J. Messelet, Jean Restout, Archives de l’art francaise, nouvelle periode, XI X,. 1938, pp. 107; 120, no. 156.

Rouen, Musee des Beaux Arts, June/September, 1970, p. 211, no. 110. List of Missing Pictures erroneously listed as executed in 1750.