Valentin de Boulogne 1591–1632
NG 4919 
The Four Ages of Man

Humphrey Wine, 2001

Extracted from:
Humphrey Wine, The Seventeenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2001).

c. 1629

Oil on canvas, 96.5 × 134.0 cm

Provenance

Probably in the collection of Michel Particelli, seigneur d’Emery (1596–1650), rue Neuve‐des‐Petits‐Champs, Paris;¹ probably in the collection of Catherine Lybault (d.1652) and her husband, Jacques Bordier (d.1658), rue du Parc‐Royal, Paris;² Dussé;³ in the collection of Philippe, duc d’Orléans and Regent of France (1672–1723), at the Palais Royal, Paris;⁴ sold in 1791 by his descendant Philippe‐Egalité, with the other French and Italian pictures in the Orléans Collection, to the Brussels banker Edouard de Walkiers and sold by him (with other pictures) to his cousin François de Laborde‐Méréville (1761–1802), who, following his emigration to England in 1793, charged them to the banker Jeremiah Harman, by whom all the paintings were sold in 1798 to a syndicate consisting of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, and Granville Leveson‐Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford;⁵ sold by the syndicate at Bryan’s Gallery, 88 Pall Mall, London, 26 December 1798 (lot 72, £84 to John Julius Angerstein),⁶ but not among the pictures noted at Angerstein’s London house by William Buchanan in 1802,⁷ nor part of the Angerstein collection (comprising only pictures at the London house) purchased for the National Gallery in 1824; sale of the Trustees of William Angerstein (1812–97)⁸ of pictures removed from Weeting Hall,⁹ Norfolk, Christie, Manson & Woods, 4 December 1897 (lot 36 as Titian, £35 14s. to Beadel); in the collection of Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted (1853–1927), at The Mote, Maidstone, Kent, apparently as by Caravaggio;¹⁰ probably at 1 Carlton Gardens, London SW1,¹¹ in the collection of Walter Horace Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1882–1948), by whom presented to the National Gallery as by Valentin through the NACF , 1938.

Exhibitions

London 1938, Royal Academy of Arts, Exhibition of 17th Century Art in Europe (290) (as by Valentin); Paris 1974, Grand Palais, Valentin et les Caravagesques Français (49); Copenhagen 1992 (23); Rome 1994–5, Villa Medici, Roma 1630. Il trionfo del pennello, pp. 196–203; San Francisco 1997, Fine Arts Musuem of San Francisco, Masters of Light: Dutch Painting in Utrecht during the Golden Age (ex‐catalogue).

Related Works

Paintings

• (1) Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College Art Gallery. Oil [page 391][page 392]on canvas, 38½ × 51¼ in., acquired in 1939 from the Engel collection, Vienna.¹² A copy¹³ (Mojana 112);

  

• (2) Wawra sale, Vienna, 17 December 1920, lot 18, 106 × 134 cm (41 × 52 in.), where attributed to Theodor Rombouts. A copy;
• (3) Anon. sale, Christie’s, 29 June 1962 (lot 163 as after Valentin, 280 guineas) 40½ × 51½ in. Photograph in NG dossier (Mojana 109).¹⁴ A copy;
• (4) Anon. sale, Lucerne, Fischer, 29 June 1973 (lot 541 as by Honthorst). 110 × 138 cm (Mojana 111). A copy;
• (5) Anon. sale, Sotheby’s, 28 July 1976 (lot 187 as after Valentin, £420). 93.5 × 127 cm. A copy. Photograph in NG dossier;
• (6) Anon sale, Milan, Finarte, 4 February 1986 (lot 118 as by Nicolas Régnier). Oil on canvas, 94 × 130 cm (Mojana 110). A copy;
• (7) Lombardy, private collection. Oil on canvas, 97 × 133 cm (Mojana 113). Possibly the same copy as (5) after restoration;
• (8) Bordeaux, Musée et Galerie des Beaux‐Arts. Oil on canvas, 114 × 150 cm. An adaptation attributed to Alexis Grimou (1678–1733).¹⁵ Photograph in NG dossier (Mojana 116);
• (9) Private collection. Anon. sale, Sotheby’s 13 July 1977 (lot 87, unsold as by Gysbert van der Kuil).¹⁶ An adaptation, illustrated in Rome 1994–5, p. 202;
• (10) [Henry] Parr sale, Christie’s, 11 March 1815 (lot 81, £10 10s. to Dillon). Described as ‘Valentini. The Four Stages of Human Life’;¹⁷
• (11) A copy of the luteplayer was in an unknown private collection in 1954 as of the school of Manfredi;¹⁸
• (12) A copy of the head and upper torso of the soldier. Anon. sale, Geneva, 26 May 1978 (lot 117). Oil on canvas, 49 × 42 cm (Mojana 115);
• (13) St Louis, Missouri, St Louis Art Museum. As has been noted, the pose of the figure at the left of Nicolas Tournier’s Musical Party (inv. 90: 1942) resembles that of the figure at the left of NG 4919.¹⁹

Prints

• (1) By Antoine Louis Romanet (1742/3–1810) after a drawing of the painting by Antoine Borel (b.1743) in Galerie du Palais‐Royal, 3 vols, Paris, 1786–1808, vol. 3 (1808) (Mojana 114) (fig. 3);
• (2) According to the catalogue of the 1897 Angerstein sale (see Provenance), the painting was ‘engraved in the Angerstein Gallery’. This certainly does not refer to John Young’s illustrated catalogue of J.J. Angerstein’s paintings published in 1823, but (possibly) to an as yet untraced illustrated catalogue of William Angerstein’s collection.

Technical Notes

In reasonable condition, but, to judge from engraving (1) – that is, both the engraved image itself and the measurements of the painting stated on it²⁰ – cut down on all sides, especially along the bottom and the right‐hand sides. There are some losses around the edges and a few small losses to the left of the lutenist, a tear in the soldier’s cuirass some 10 cm long and other damages in this area and to the right of it by the sword handle, and there has been some fading in the reds and discolouring in the greens of the lutenist’s costume.

The ground is a warm buff colour laid onto a medium‐weight plain‐weave canvas. The painting was relined at some time before its acquisition by the Gallery in 1938 onto a (presumably) nineteenth‐century stretcher, since a handwritten label in ink on the back states: ‘I have examined this picture in January 1898 – It has at some time been either oiled over the varnish, or oil‐varnished, therefore the old varnish can only be removed, if at all, by a very skilled expert. J.D. Crace.’ In addition there are the following marks on the back of the stretcher: (i) in black stencil, upper left, 606; (ii) gouged into the wood, 40; (iii) in ink on an old paper label, No. 290, presumably applied for the 1938 exhibition (see above), and on the central upright cross‐member a Royal Academy label, ‘Exhibition of 17th‐century European Art, 1938. Owner Viscount Bearsted, 1, Carlton Gardens, SW1.’; (iv) in black stencil, 210 (?), but possibly 290, and (v) in white chalk GX, presumably a reference to Gallery X of the Royal Academy, in which the painting hung for the 1938 exhibition.

The X‐ray photograph (fig. 1) indicates some alterations around the figure of the child, in the position of the lutenist’s knee and, perhaps, to the position of the old man which may once have been a few centimetres further right, and to the outline of the soldier’s right shoulder. A change in the position of the latter’s left thigh is visible to the naked eye, as is a change to the outline of the left‐hand (as seen by the viewer) page of the book. A photograph taken after cleaning and before restoration in 1967, when NG 4919 was last restored, shows that the original position of the lutenist’s left calf was further to the left.

Discussion

There is no reason to doubt the long‐standing title of NG 4919 nor its attribution, both of which date back to when the picture was in the Orléans collection. The subject of the Ages of Man was not uncommon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although the number of ages depicted varied from three to nine.²¹ Ripa noted that the ancient philosophers considered that man had three ages (beginning, middle and end), whereas the medical profession distinguished four ages, ‘adolescentia, gioventù, virilità, & vecchiaia’, corresponding, to paraphrase Ripa, to the periods of physical growth, youth, maturity, and physical decline.²² This fourfold division of human life was the more commonly held view, and was also favoured by several poets, including Ovid in the Metamorphoses (XV:199–213) and Dante, as well as Valentin’s near contemporary Gian Battista Marino (1569–1625); the latter’s poem on the Instabilità e la varietà del tempo was published in La lira, Rome.²³

However, Valentin’s picture in its details owes little to these poets or to Ripa. Its figures are closer to the genre of indoor concerts and drinking parties, a type of painting in which Valentin (among numerous painters during the early seventeenth century) specialised. Thus, a figure in similar costume to that of the lutenist (here representing Youth) appears at the left of Valentin’s Gathering in a Tavern (Paris, Louvre, inv. 8255; fig. 2) and in his The Denial of Peter (Moscow, Pushkin Museum), while the old man is close in type to the figure in the centre in The Concert with Four Musicians and a Drinker (New York, private collection) and to the old viol da gamba(?) player in the Assembly with a Fortune‐Teller (private collection, on loan to the Art Gallery of Ontario).

Valentin has given each figure attributes appropriate to his age. The empty object held by the child may be a birdcage symbolising hope (the captive bird hoping for its freedom)²⁴ or it may be a trap, as Bonfait has suggested.²⁵ But since, as is more clearly apparent from Romanet’s print (fig. 3), the bird (if indeed the cage or trap is for birds) has flown, it may represent childish naivety or, less cynically, innocence – a state of mind in keeping with the child’s expression. The youth at the left plays a large tenor or bass lute, whose striped back indicates that it would have been made from yew and whose number of string courses (9 or 10)²⁶ and body shape suggest an instrument of the type made in Venice or Padua between 1610 and 1650.²⁷ The lute may have been intended to symbolise pleasure or amorous longings.²⁸ The youth’s striped sleeve, found in other paintings by Valentin as well as by Caravaggio and other Caravaggisti, may allude to Ripa’s statement that changing colour represents the state of youth, which easily changes its mind.²⁹ More probably his costume was meant to recall that of the early sixteenth century, as would the fur‐lined gown of the old man have recalled the costume of the mid‐sixteenth century,³⁰ so distancing an evidently allegorical painting from the viewer’s immediate experience. The warrior at the right represents virilità. He is crowned with the victor’s laurel and [page 395]holds a book on which can faintly be seen the plan of fortifications. His left elbow rests on his helmet, which (as shown in the print) once covered his gauntlets. His pose is close to that of Ter Brugghen’s Sleeping Mars (Utrecht, Centraal Museum; fig. 4).³¹ His sleeping state suggests negligence:³² in spite of his armour and laurels he is not only himself vulnerable but displays the plans of the fort for all to see, although in what may be another reference to the passage of time, these plans appear to have been painted as having faded,³³ like the writing on the page, which in turn appears to be manuscript rather than print, suggesting that the dog‐eared book as a whole is old. The old man is shown with a pile of coins – a symbol of avarice, itself sometimes associated with old age.³⁴ He holds a wine‐flask protected by matting, and a glass (the glass has a hollow baluster stem typical of seventeenth‐century Venetian style)³⁵ which may be intended to be symbolic of the fragility of life. All in all, Valentin’s painting may be seen as a depiction of the four stages of human folly.

NG 4919 cannot be dated with certainty. Mojana has proposed 1624/5,³⁶ Bonfait 1626–8³⁷ and Cuzin 1627–32,³⁸ the last of these periods being the only one to which other works by Valentin are certainly datable. As Cuzin has pointed out,³⁹ Valentin’s style has little distinctive chronological development, but he is surely right to have placed NG 4919 in the same chronological bracket as the Munich Erminia among the Shepherds and the Louvre Fortune‐Teller,⁴⁰ dated by Mojana to 1629–30 and c. 1628 respectively. Contrary to Mojana, there seems to be no reason to separate NG 4919 chronologically from these two works.⁴¹ The rather weak‐chinned model for the lutenist in NG 4919 may be the one Valentin used for his Samson (Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. no. 72.50; fig. 5), a picture for which Valentin received payments between December 1630 and July 1631.⁴² The tonality of NG 4919 is, however, darker than that of the Cleveland painting and so may be a little earlier, say c. 1629 – that is, close in date to the Allegory of Rome (Rome, Villa Lante).⁴³

General References

G.K. Nagler, Neues allgemeines Kunstler‐Lexicon, vol. 19, Munich 1849, p. 325; Waagen 1854, vol. II, p. 498; Casimir Stryienski, La Galerie du Régent Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, Paris 1913, p. 178; Davies 1957, pp. 214–15; Roberto Longhi, ‘A propos de Valentin’, La Revue des Arts, 1958, II, p. 61; Wright 1985b, p. 143; B. Nicholson, Caravaggism in Europe, 2nd edn, 3 vols, Milan 1989, vol. 1, p. 200 and pl. 682; Mojana 1989, no. 35.

Notes