A seated female nude holding a bunch of grapes while embracing a child

This drawing was made in preparation for the central figure of Erigone in Natoire’s The Triumph of Bacchus at the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. 6854; see Caviglia-Brunel, op. cit., no. P.187, ill.), acquired by King Louis XV in 1747, the year it was first exhibited at the Salon. Erigone, the daughter of Icarus, was seduced by Bacchus, who assumed the shape of a cluster of grapes, as recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VI,125). However, the version of the story that inspired Natoire may have been a contemporary French translation by Antoine de la Fosse of Anacreon’s Odes, where the story of Erigone was conflated with that of the Triumph of Bacchus (exhib. cat., Paris, 1991-1992, op. cit., p. 263).

In addition to the present sheet, Natoire made several drawings for figures in the painting: a study of Bacchus (Sotheby’s, New York, 8 January 1991, lot 78; see Caviglia-Brunel, op. cit., no. D.415, ill.); a study for the faun carrying a basket of grapes in the right middle ground in Smith College Museum of Art, (Northampton (inv. 1951.270); and a study of a woman nursing an infant (Louvre, inv. 31425; see ibid., no. D.377, ill.), which in the painting was adapted to the woman holding a silver pitcher (exhib. cat., Paris, 1991-1992, op. cit., pp. 264-266, figs. 3, 4, 6).