Florentine Poet

Inscription: Signed (lower right): ALEX-CABANEL.

John Hobart Warren, New York and Hoosick Falls, N.Y. (by 1880–d. 1908); his widow, Mrs. Henriette Mott Warren, New York (1908–d. 1923)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Van Gogh as Critic and Self-Critic," October 30, 1973–January 6, 1974, no. 16.

Musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération. "Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889), La tradition du beau," July 10–December 5, 2010, no. 194 (as "Le Poète florentin").

Cologne. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud. "Alexandre Cabanel: Die Tradition des Schönen," February 4–May 15, 2011, no. 50.

Edward Strahan [Earl Shinn], ed. The Art Treasures of America. Philadelphia, [1880], vol. 2, p. 122, ill. p. 119 (facsimile of a sketch by L. Massard after the painting), discusses two replicas of the Salon composition, one owned by Mr. J. H. Warren (MMA) and the other by Israel Corse, New York (present location unknown); describes the scene as the poet Sordello "sitting on a garden bench, rapturously listened to by languid lovers and a wet-eyed Francesca".

A[lfred]. G[eorge]. Temple. Catalogue of the Loan Collection of Pictures by Painters of the French School. Exh. cat., Art Gallery of the Corporation of London. London, 1898, p. 93, under no. 138, catalogues a larger version of the composition in the collection of M. Bessonneau, Angers (present location unknown); erroneously states that the MMA picture was shown at the Salon of 1861.

Albert Boime. The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. London, 1971, p. 211 n. 63, states that this picture is based on a composition of the late 1840s, and cites it as an example of Cabanel's early depictions of "languid figures in an italianate or Renaissance setting".

Charles S. Moffett. Van Gogh as Critic and Self-Critic. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1973, unpaginated, no. 16.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 431, ill.

Michel Hilaire in Michel Hilaire and Sylvain Amic. Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889), La tradition du beau. Exh. cat., Musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération. Paris, 2010, pp. 370, 372, no. 194, ill. (color), states that it is one of two reduced versions of the Salon picture that entered American collections at the end of the nineteenth century.

Jean Nougaret in Michel Hilaire and Sylvain Amic. Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889), La tradition du beau. Exh. cat., Musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération. Paris, 2010, p. 457, no. 125, lists three other replicas of the Salon picture, one in a private collection, New York and the others, location unknown.

This picture is a reduced replica of the painting shown in the Salon of 1861 (present location unknown). Nougaret (2010) catalogues three other replicas.

A preparatory drawing for the reclining figure is in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.