LA FOSSE, Charles de
(b. 1636, Paris, d. 1716, Paris)

Presentation of the Virgin

1682
Oil on canvas, 307 x 401 cm
Musée des Augustins, Toulouse

In the 1680s de la Fosse turned to Rubens as a model and an inspiration. The effect of this admiration is evident in the figures of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia over the mantelpiece of the Salon de Diane at Versailles and in the landscape of the Finding of Moses, but it is in the Presentation of the Virgin, dated 1682, that the full effects of this new taste appear. This picture is closer to the mature manner of Rubens and more fully Baroque in its conception than anything that had been produced in France up to this date.