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Date: 1824-1889

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Description: signed Alex. Cabanel and dated Florence 1871 (lower left)

oil on canvas

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Dimensions: 63 by 30 in.

160 by 76 cm.

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Exhibited: Paris, Salon, 1872, no. 239

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Notes: By 1870 Cabanel was one of the most successful artists and atelier-masters in France, leading one French critic to exclaim, "M. Cabanel is not an artist; he is a saint. He doesn't make art; he makes perfection. He does not deserve criticism; he deserves paradise" (H. Barbara Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, p. 131). Emile Zola saw Cabanel as the "genius of the classical," and among his students were Jules Bastien-Lepage, Léon Comerre, and Aimé Nicolas Morot. (see lot 209 )

Cabanel's importance as a painter and teacher was profound. He served on seventeen Salon juries between 1868 and 1888, and assisted many artists in winning the coveted Prix de Rome. His students numbered in the hundreds and their works appeared in large volume at the Paris Salons. Writer C.H. Stranahan noted in his 1888 A History of French Painting, that "no fewer than 112 exhibitors in the Salon of 1886 signed themselves 'Pupil of Cabanel' and "seven out of ten is often the proportion of his pupils accepted to enter into loge for the Prix de Rome" (as quoted in ibid, p. 132).

Giacomina was painted in 1871 in Florence and exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1872. Cabanel's interest in Italy dates to his Prix de Rome which allowed him to stay at the Villa Medici from 1846-1851. His interest in the Old Masters dates to this time, and this work is a testament to his fascination with Medieval and Renaissance art and classical literature.