The Judgement of Solomon is an oil on canvas painting of the judgement of Solomon by the French artist Poussin, from 1649. Produced during his 1647-1649 stay in Rome, it is now in the Louvre, in Paris. It measures 101 by 150 cm. Art historians largely consider it as one of the artist masterpieces, in the art of the 17th century French School and French art as a whole. Several engravings were produced of the work.
It was commissioned by Jean Pointel, a banker from Lyon and a close friend and faithful patron of Poussin, and sent to him to display in Paris during the following months. After Pointel's death, the work passed to the financier Nicolas du Plessis-Rambouillet, then the Procureur Général to the Parliament of Paris Achille III de Harlay, and then to Charles-Antoine Hérault, a painter and a member of the Académie française. Hérault sold the work to Louis XIV in 1685 for 5000 livres.
The French royal collection initially hung it in a cabinet in the surintendance des Bâtiments, before moving it to the château de Versailles around 1710, before being seen in the salon of the directeur des Bâtiments du roi in 1784. In 1792âÂÂ1793, in accordance with the principles of the Decree of 2 November 1789, the painting was seized by the revolutionary state and moved to the Louvre as one of the works displayed there when it first opened as a public museum on 10 August 1793.
Towards the end of the 1640s two major figures became patrons of Poussin The first of these was Paul Fréart de Chantelou, a friend of the artist, secretary to François Sublet de Noyers and collector of French art, whose commissions from Poussin included The Seven Sacraments and a self-portrait now in the Louvre The second, Jean Pointel, was a silk merchant and banker from Lyon who had moved to rue Saint-Germain in Paris and become not only a great admirer of Poussin's work but also a friend of the artist. Around 1645-1646 he travelled to Rome and became Poussin's friend, commissioning several works from him, including The Discovery of Moses, Eliezer and Rebecca, Landscape with Polyphemus, Landscape with Orpheus and Eurydice and another self-portrait, less well-known than the one sent to Chantelou
Pointel also owned Holy Family with Ten Figures, Noli me tangere, Landscape with Calm Weather and The Storm and stayed in Rome again from 1647 to 1649, during which stay he commissioned the work that became Judgement. During this productive period, Poussin also had to contend with letters from Chantelou, jealously accusing him of sending all his finer and more successful works to Pointel not Chantelou. By contrast, the great trust between Poussin and Pointel allowed the latter to place large sums in the former's bank and he even made Pointel executor of his will, although in the end Pointel predeceased Poussin in 1660. At the end of his life Pointel owned 21 paintings and 80 drawings by Poussin.
Described as a spiritual descendant of Raphael and sometimes even as "the new Raphael", "France's Raphael" or the "French Raphael", Poussin's Judgement was particularly influenced by Raphael's 1518-1519 treatment of the same subject and his . In 1649, the year Judgement was completed, Poussin also produced an Assumption, Eliezer and Ebecca and his first self-portrait, although around this period the Fronde made it difficult for him to contact his patrons back in France - Oskar Bätschmann even argues from Judgement that Poussin wanted France's religious conflicts to end, with the artist superimposing an idea of justice, wisdom and equity on an emotional debate in the work.
On sending Pointel Judgement around 1649-1650 Poussin called it his best work.
Shortly after Pointel's death, his collection was auctioned off. According to British art historian Timothy James Clark, the executors of Pointel's will very quickly realised that they were not knowledgeable enough to assess the works and took on academician Philippe de Champaigne to catalogue and value them before putting them on the market. This included Judgement and twenty other works by Poussin, but only Landscape in Calm Weather is recorded as still being in the Pointel family until 1685, with all the others sold off. de Champaigne wrote of Judgement as "Item, another painting on canvas, around three feet high by four or five feet representing the Judgement of Solomon, without a frame, work by the said Poussin, taken for the sum of 800 livres".
Between 1660 and 1665 it was acquired for 2200 livres by Nicolas Du Plessis-Rambouillet, financier, fermier général and secrétaire du roi - at the same time he also acquired Poussin's Landscape with a Snake for 1800 livres, also from Pointel's collection. Between 1665 and 1685 the work was owned by Achille III de Harlay, Procureur Général to the Parlement de Paris from 1671 to 1689 Premier Président of the Parlement de Paris from 1689 to 1707, who hung it in his cabinet. In 1685 Charles-Antoine Hérault was recorded as the work's owner.
Louis XIV bought two Poussin works from Hérault for 5000 livres each in 1685, one being Judgement and the other The Death of Saphira - at other times Hérault also sold him Poussin's Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, Holy Family with Saint John and Saint Elizabeth in a Landscape (also known as The Wide Holy Family) and The Shepherds of Arcadia.
In 1687 Judgement was number 443 in Charles Le Brun's catalogue of the royal collection, then it was recorded in 1695 and by 1701 at the latest in the cabinet des Tableaux in the Petit Appartement du roi at the château de Versailles. Around 1706 it was hung in the cabinet des Tableaux of the surintendance des Bâtiments, then in 1710 it returned to Versailles' cabinet des Tableaux. In 1760 it was recorded in the library of the hôtel de la Surintendance, although in 1784 it was also recorded in the salon of the directeur des Bâtiments du roi with the note "It must be left wholly visible, there are five inches hidden above under the frame". In 1789 Martin de la Porte was taken on to restore the 1637-1638 version of Poussin's Rape of the Sabine Women and he also worked on Judgement, with the account book stating the latter was "cleaned and [its] holes repaired" for 60 livres.
No source is known to survive showing what happened to Judgement immediately after the passing of the décret des biens du clergé mis àla disposition de la Nation on 2 November 1789 during the French Revolution. That decree paved the way for royal possessions such as Judgement to be converted into 'biens nationaux' (i.e. property of the Republican and later imperial French state). It was placed in the Louvre around 1793, the year it was inaugurated as a public museum. It has remained on permanent display within the museum walls ever since 1793, except for travelling exhibitions, and as of 2024 was in Room 826 of the aile Richelieu alongside six other works by the artist.
French poet, art critic and art historian Georges Lafenestre collaborated with Eugène Lazare Richtenberger from 1893 to 1905 to produce a catalogue raisonné of works in various European museums, including the Louvre. This included producing the most factual description of Judgement possible:
André Félibien noted simply and conclusively that Judgement is admirable for the correction of drawing and the beauty of expressions". In an 1823 collection of works on artists' techniques and of general observations, the French medievalist and curator Alexandre Lenoir devoted a chapter to fathers' and mothers' love, using Andromache, the play of the same name and the mothers in Judgement as examples of the latter:
Jean-François Sobry, author of a Poétique des arts, also praised the work:
For the author of an article in an 1826 encyclopaedic review, Poussin was one of the greatest geniuses France has produced. He explained in these terms what - for him - made Poussin a great master of painting:
The French art historian, engraver and painter Charles-Paul Landon wrote that it "is impossible to render better than Poussin did the fierce joy imprinted on the livid face of the bad mother, and which appears in her commanding gesture", adding that "the figures in this painting are perfectly drawn" and that "the draperies are adjusted with this noble and severe taste that Poussin drew from his study of the antique". In Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain's 1806 biography of the artist he stated "we must look upon this painting as one of the greatest models of the art of imitation of impression by expression, [we] can think nothing above the characters and sentiments that animate the actors in this scene". The British writer and traveller Maria Graham wrote that Judgement "is considered as one of Poussin's finest works, and perhaps no other painter has produced a better treatment of the subject", though she added that "there is not much beauty in the women, and their violent expressions excite more horror than sympathy".
For François Emmanuel Toulongeon, the work "is above praise; it is even among Poussin's masterpieces, a model of sentiment, of expression, of spirit and of morality". Charles de Brosses agreed and declared that it was not only one of Poussin's best paintings but also one of the best easel paintings that he knew.
French parliamentarian and historian François Emmanuel Toulongeon praised the work but also noted some errors and imperfections in it:
Toulongeon explains his rigorous approach by admitting that "its in the first rank of paintings that one must search for and note imperfections; in others one searches for beauties".
Despite praising the work, Charles-Paul Landon also noted what he held to be imperfections in it - "maybe it is [artistic] licence to represent the soldier about to strike as semi-nude, [he] more closely resembles a Greek warrior than a man guarding the king of Israel ... the tones of the draperies have no harmony with one another ... [and] the shades of the skin tones lack truthfulness". Jacques Depauw notes in his article "ÃÂ propos du 'Jugement de Salomon' de Poussin" that the painter made a mistake in the painting's composition. In its initial paragraphs he states:
Depauw disagrees with this premise and elaborates a theory discussed below. This mistake attributed to the painter was also noted by Oskar Bätschmann, whose 1999 Dialectics of Painting stated "the painting is difficult to read since it deviates from the Biblical text and from painterly conventions".
The earliest surviving print is a burin one by Jean Dughet, Poussin's brother-in-law, and dates to between 1653 and 1670. A brother of Gaspard Dughet and Anne-Marie Dughet, Jean Dughet closely collaborated with Poussin and inherited many goods from him, including his studio. It is dedicated to Camillo Massimo. Two other counter-proof prints were made but instead dedicated to an otherwise unknown Matteo Giudice. The example of it shown below is one from these two print runs after Dughet's death in 1676, with the Medici coat of arms at the top.
Guillaume Chasteau's 1685 engraving measures 37 by 52.7 centimetres and has a Latin inscription with a French translation reading "Wise Solomon invoked Nature to arbitrate his Judgement, the true mother was unable to let her son be divided. Third Book of Kings, chapter III". The final 17th century print of the painting was one from 1691 by Martial Desbois for Charlotte-Catherine Patin's Tabellæ selectæ ac explicatæ (Paintings Chosen and Explained). It is 27.8 by 39.5 cm, with two inscriptions, both in Latin, with the first in large characters translating as "The most famous of Solomon's judgements" and the second one in smaller characters stating it showed a painting by Poussin, "a Frenchman in Paris".
"Engraver to the King" ÃÂtienne Gantrel produced a print of the painting measuring 46.2 by 52.5 cm around 1700. Its French and Latin inscription exactly reproduces Chasteau's. Gantrel's version was published around 1750 by the print seller Robert Hecquet at a size of 55 by 74.5 cm with a new inscription, replacing the twinned Latin and French of previous prints with a single French one reading âÂÂWise Solomon invoked Nature to be arbitrator of his Judgement, the true mother was unable to allow her son to be dividedâÂÂ. Another 'engraver to the King', ÃÂtienne Baudet, also tried to make a print of the painting, but with little success. The Baudet print in counter-proof was catalogued by Roger-Armand Weigert, qui noted that it measured 45.2 by 69 cm. Baudet produced it in Rome around 1700 but we do not have a clear date for either his or Gantrel's version.
In 1802 the Louvre commissioned the 22-year-old Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to make a print of Judgement, his first official commission. Due to a dispute over money, he abandoned the project and the print, completing less than a quarter of it and leaving only a pencil, brush, and wash drawing for it, now in the Louvre. Two years later, in 1804, the sixth volume of Annales du Musée et de l'ÃÂcole moderne des beaux-arts featured that century's first completed print after Judgement, this time by Charles Normand. Another by Denis-Sébastien Leroy, Louis-Yves Queverdo and Antoine-Claude-François Villerey was published in the eighth volume of Cours historique et élémentaire de peinture, published by Filhol, Artiste-Graveur et éditeur in 1814.
The surviving 1825 print by Antoine-Alexandre Morel is one proof before the letter, that is one of the first proofs before the caption was engraved below it by a different printing process. A pupil of Jacques-Louis David, Morel also produced an etching in burin after the painting. It measures 58.5 by 78.9 cm.
The British painter and engraver Leon Kossoff produced a series of Expressionist etchings on paper after works by Poussin, known as The Poussin Project: A series of Prints after Nicolas Poussin, in collaboration with Ann Dowker. Judgement is the first of them and Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art both have two versions of it, produced in 1998, one 21.3 by 29.8 cm and the other 42.9 by 59.7 cm. Another version entitled From Poussin: Judgment of Solomon is now at the Annadale Galleries in Australia.
was produced by Poussin himself almost as soon as the painting was complete and is almost identical to the painting other than the lack of clothing on the floor between the two mothers.
Very little is known of the life of French artist Denis-Sébastien Leroy, but he is known to be the artist behind a c.1800 watercolour after Judgement which notably inspired Queverdo and Villerey's print. It is now in the musée Baron-Martin in Gray.
For Poussin's contemporary André Félibien, the characters in the painting are a good fit for Hippocrates's theory of the four humours and act as good visual aids for them. He argued that people's complexions and skin tones demonstrated their dominant humour and that historic and contemporary painters observed this from life and depicted it. He states that in Judgement "because the true mother is in good faith, [Poussin] paints her as a simple woman without malice, whose flesh colour witnesses to the goodness of her nature; for sanguine people are not usually capable of doing ill deeds; they can be quick and choleric, but their fire soon evaporates, and they keep no hatred in their souls" whereas he "not only makes known the malice [of the bad mother] through her skin colour, but still more in her thinness and dryness caused by black bile which dominates bad people, who are hot and burning, dried out, and makes their bodies skinnier, unlike those who are a little sanguine, whose skin is fresher and firmer".
Toulongeon uses similar language to describe the two women:
He also described the depiction of the king:
In his short article in the bulletin de la Société d'étude du XVIIe siècle, Depauw reverses the usual identification of the woman on the right as the bad mother and the one on the left as the good mother, solving the artist's apparent mistake compared to the biblical account. He starts from what "bothers [me] in the representation of this woman as to attributing her the role of the bad mother". He notes that the woman normally understood to be the bad mother is not sympathetic to us, with a "vehement expression", "hardened features", "hair bound with a simple band", "pale skin", "rumpled clothes", "unalluring", "dull in colour". In short, she "does not correspond to our idea of the "good mother" and thus does not inspire us with the appropriate compassion". By contrast, on the treatment of the bad mother (normally identified as the good mother), he writes "dressed in generous drapery in live colours, who we can guess is shapely from the little pink flesh we can see on her back, wearing a beautiful scarf, is she sympathetic to us? Maybe not so much, but she does not provoke us and as a consequence we interpret her gesture as a "Stop! Don't do that!" of protest".
However, Depauw insists that this is not how the scene plays out in the biblical text - before Solomon are the woman who stole the living child, and the other woman, who firstly believed her child was dead, secondly noted that it had been substituted by another woman, and thirdly that she was persisting in wanting to keep the stolen child. A dialogue of the deaf has just played out, before the king ordered the living child to be cut in half, an order a soldier is about to carry out, in the moment just before Solomon changes his mind. The woman holding the dead child "is seized with an outburst and protests at the last moment, [under] the influence of anger, [born] out of a feeling of injustice". Depauw continues
According to this analysis, Depauw argues that this anger is at the very moment of turning into pity mixed with a feeling of terror. For him her lifted arm and pointing finger prove her to be the true mother of the child who, according to the biblical account, is about to say "My lord, if you please, give her the child; only do not kill him". and is shown by Poussin at the last moment of righteous anger, about to abandon her child for love of him.
It appeared in a touring exhibition from 1994 to 1995, staged at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris (27 September 1994 to 2 January 1995) and the Royal Academy in London (19 January to 13 April 1995).