Like an old backdrop.

How can you find an XVIIIth century venitian frescoe in typical Normandy cottage ?
How can you mix two "styles" that are so different without risking a big clash, a big mess.
This is the challenge my last clients proposed me.
They are admirers of XVIIIth century in general and of Tiepolo in particular and I had already painted numerous murals in their previous home, a few years ago.
They have moved, sold their house to a famous rock star and bought a very charming house in Normandy, in the heart of the famous Pays d'Auge.

So, we decided to imagine a story , or to pretend and play like kids do ...let's say that we had found some beautiful painted canvases in an attic, like fragments of  an old theater backdrop, let's say that it was a copy of one of the most famous frescoes of Tiepolo in Palazzo Labia. All these canvases would have almost the right size but not exactly, they would create some kind of continuity, but not really, let's dream... it could look like this...

... and like this...

Three Ladies

There are so many gorgious female figures in the paintings of the old Masters that I would like to have the time, and the pleasure, to copy them all.
Here are three examples of copies I did these last years and exhibited on my booth at Maison & Objet.
Being self-taught, copying is the way I learned and still learn. I have to find out things by myself , which takes effort and time but I have the privilege of learning from amazing models. It is a very humbling , and sometimes painful process but it is also a source of joy. I hope these pictures show all this.

"La Tempête " 150x84cm Casein on canvas , after Piero da Cortona ( one of the figures of the famous ceiling of Palazzo Barberini in Rome)

Detail

"Mere et Enfant" 150x50cm , casein on canvas , after Veronese ( figure located to the extreme left of "Le repas chez Simon" in Versailles).

detail

"Le repas chez Simon"

"La Coquette" 80x50cm , casein on canvas , after Giandomenico Tiepolo.

detail