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Camille Roqueplan - The Pardon Refused (from Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth" (ca. 1826–29)

Another interesting painting shared with me by my friend (the one with the frame-cutting skill). It's also from the collection of the Petit Palais (aka Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris), and it also looks like a piece from the Dutch Golden Age. In reality, it was painted in 1837, by the French artist Camille Roqueplan, as a historical reconstruction of what the house of Anthony van Dyck in London might have looked like. It's usually called Van Dyck à Londres:

Amusingly, I do remember seeing this painting in the museum, but I managed to miss its mirror (though it was many, many years ago, and I was not that fixated on mirrors yet):

The mirror actually reveals one specific historical inaccuracy in this 'historical reconstruction': as you can see, it's the type of mirror that is encased in its own mirror frame:

These mirrors were produced much later, closer to the end of the 18th century, as a specific feature of Venetian/Rococo decorative style, and then became fashionable throughout Europe.

Roqueplan seems to smuggle a later luxury object into Van Dyck’s 1630s world, giving the artist the kind of 'luxurious studio of the famous artist' interior that looked convincing to his 19th-century viewers.

PS: The placement of the mirror is equally awkward: mirrors were not usually hung this way in the mid-17th century. I once wrote a large overview of the transition mirrors made in Dutch houses during the 16th century. It’s a slightly old piece, but perhaps still interesting: On mirrors, tables and walls (and yes, girls too, but now in the context(s))

#Camille Roqueplan #mirror #Anthony van Dyck