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Provenance: André Storelli, his sale, June 1933 (according to inscription on mount)

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Notes: This grand compositional study is preparatory for a painting of the same subject by Antoine Coypel, now in the reserve collection of the Louvre. The canvas is in a ruined state and barely legible, with major losses particularly in the upper register, making the present drawing of major importance as the only complete surviving record of the composition by the artist.υ1

The scene is taken from Book X of Virgil's Aeneid, and depicts the moment at which the body of Pallas is returned to his father, Evander, King of the Arcadians. Evander had sent his son to fight the Rutilians alongside Aeneas: in battle he had proven to be a fierce warrior, but was killed by the Rutilians' leader, Turnus. We see Evander meeting the procession outside the walls of his palace, robed in a white tunic, embracing his son's body, which in the painting is cloaked in gold.

The painting was executed circa 1716-17 for the Gallery of Aeneas at the Palais-Royal, Paris. It was one of a series of seven large canvases, all depicting scenes from the Aeneid, which were commissioned by Philippe, duc d'Orléans to complete the decoration of a large gallery he had built in 1698-1700. Three of the paintings are in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier and well preserved, but the remaining four,υ2 like The Funeral of Pallas, are in a poor state due to Coypel's experimental use of unstable pigments. Eight figure studies in the same media as the present sheet relate to the painting, all of them in the Louvre.υ3

Before this drawing came to light, the composition of the painting was known in reverse from a contemporary engraving by Louis Desplaces.υ4 Comparing the two, it is interesting to note that Coypel altered the background from its appearance in this drawing: removing the arches running parallel with the figures and instead placing the protagonists before a fortified city gate, with a wooded landscape beyond. The effect is a more open composition, but less overtly classical than as it appears in Coypel's first, grand design.

1. See N. Garnier, Antoine Coypel (1661-1722), Paris 1989, p. 174, no. 132, fig. 447
2. In the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras and the Louvre
3. Idem., figs. 448-455
4. Idem., fig. 446