A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, Paris

Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry French

Not on view

With a sympathetic gaze, this figure extends a hand offering a loaf of bread, an embodiment of feeding the hungry, one of the seven works of mercy that Biennourry was commissioned to paint with fellow Prix de Rome winner Eugène Damery (1823–1853) for a chapel in the Church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. This was the artist’s third major religious commission after successfully completing decorations for the Parisian churches of Saint-Roch and Saint-Séverin. The restoration and redecoration of Saint-Eustache from 1842 to 1860 involved more than twenty academic painters, though many, such as Biennourry, are little known today.

A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, Paris, Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry (French, Bar-sur-Aube 1823–1893 Paris), Fabricated black and white chalk, squared with fabricated black chalk, on blue laid paper

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A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for
A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for

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