Maurice Denis

Galerie Druet, Paris

Comte Kessler, Weimar (acquired from the above in 15 March 1908)

Private collection, Paris (by 1965)

Sale: Sotheby’s London, 30 April 1969, lot 156 (titled La Cathedrale à Siena)

Private collection, New York (acquired in 1978)

J. L. Vaudoyer, “Petites Expositions”, La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosité supplément à la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1-2 January 1909, Paris, p. 3

“Exposition de M. Maurice Denis”, Supplément à Art et Décoration, January 1909, Paris, pp. 2-3

C. Schafer, Maurice Denis et le comte Kessler (1902-1913), vol. 309, Frankfurt, 1997, pp.187-8, no. 14 (titled Vue de San Domenico de Sienne)

Paris, Galerie Druet, Maurice Denis, 1908, no. 27 (titled Vue de San Domenico, Sienne)

This work will be included in the forthcoming Denis catalogue raisonné being prepared by Claire Denis and Fabienne Stahl.

Maurice Denis, one of the founding members of the Nabis group, was constantly traveling and drawing inspiration from landscapes, people and religious and historical sites. As one of the chief forces in the revival of religious art in France, Denis created monumental mural decorations for French churches and founded in 1919 the Atelier d'Art Sacré.

Denis traveled many times to Siena, notably in December 1907. The artist dated the work as 1907, however the artist’s expert, Claire Denis, believes that the present work was painted in his studio in St Germain-en-Laye in 1908 after a sketch he made of San Domenico the previous year.

He was struck by the church (right), balanced on a hill, and the staggered houses in the foreground. The addition of minuscule human figures in the lower part of the composition emphasises the scale of the church.

The need to capture the architectural expanse of San Domenico within its surrounding city was shared by Le Corbusier in 1907 and was something Denis would revisit in his later paintings.