After Laurent de La Hyre

Commissioned in 1646 by the church of Saint-Etienne-Du-Mont, Paris, La Hyre produced a suite of seventeen drawings for a tapestry series devoted to the Life of St. Stephen. The drawings are now in the Louvre, and are augmented by an additional six variants. The scenes, with their clear and precisely delineated settings, concern for perspective, structured action, and bookish subjects reflect La Hyre's principles and the appeal of his approach. La Hyre executed the designs which were rendered on canvas by Antoine de Le Sueur. The painted cartoon for this scene has not been located. While the variant drawings contain differences from the finished studies, the Morgan's drawing faithfully and without hesitation follows the compositional drawing in the Louvre, indicating it is a copy, as Rosenberg and Thuillier posited. Curiously, however, the copyist used two sheets of paper for the scene and carefully measured and squared it, suggesting that even if it is a copy it may have played a role in the creative process for this project.