Resumen de Les visites de Bergeret de Grancourt et de Fragonard aux cabinets de peinture de Vienne, Saxe et Mannheim en été 1774
This study proposes the reconstitution of the return trip from the second Italian voyage of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), which took place in 1773. He was accompained by his host and patron Pierre-Jacques Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt (1715-1785), financier, "Receveur Général des Finances" in Montauban and Parisian art colector. In 2001, an exhibition comprehensively dealt with the major halts of this voyage in Italy, leaving aside the return trip to Paris. The focal point of this part of the trip was to visit collections of painting in Vienna and in Germany. It lasted two more months and represented one of the best occasions afforded the painter to study the works of the important old masters.
This study thus reconstitutes -using the information provided by Bergeret's journal and Fragonard's drawings that have been conserved- the itinerary of the return to Paris that the financier and the painter took with their immediate family and servants from the month of August through the beginning of the month of September 1774. In order to do this we will analyze the artistic collections, as well as the different impressions noted by the art patron, and the drawings testifying to the confrontation of the painter from Grasse with the masters of the past.
