| A prolific and multifaceted talent, Jean Tassel was one of those rare artists who treated many types of scenes. Besides the standard religious portraits and mythological themes important to French patrons of the era, Jean Tassel also produced genres, a relatively rare subject for French artists of those days. Tassel's genre scenes are particularly interesting for their dependence on actual observation. The son of Richard Tassel, a painter active in Langres, Jean came to Rome in 1634; there he and S6bastien Bourdon shared an interest in the Dutch Bamboccianti. Jean's broad-ranging interest expanded to Caravaggio, earlier French masters such as Jean Le Clerc (whose works he copied and whose student he might have been), as well as a whole spectrum of Italian masters including Johann Liss. A number of Jean Tassel's paintings, with their strong shadows, vivid and emphatic contours, and spotlit figures, show an affinity with the work of the Parmese master Schedoni. By 1647 Jean Tassel was back in Langres, where he continued to produce Bamboccianti subjects and worked for churches in Dijon and Langres. He was also active in Troyes. Among his finest surviving paintings is the Portrait of Catherine de Montholon (Dijon, Musee des Beaux-Arts), which is notable for its straightforward, frank, and powerful characterization. He sometimes repeated compositions. Compared to the elegant smoothness of most Parisian masters of the period, Tassel's provincial style is rougher, more dynamic, and brightly colored. At his best, such as in the Judgement of Solomon (Sarasota, Ringling Museum of Art; now generally given to him), Tassel endows his figures with a brooding intensity, creates a complex composition with his strange spotlighting, and demonstrates a gift for rich anecdotal detail. Tassel's oeuvre and chronology remain matters of dispute among scholars. Recent literature has tried to expand Tassel's oeuvre by adding works formerly given to Liss. |
