ƒ ARNOULD DE VUEZ (Saint-Omer, 1644-Lille, 1720) THE INCREDULITY OF SAINT THOMAS Canvas Unframed The disbelief of Saint Thomas, canvas, unframed 100 x 97 CM - 39,4 x 38,2 IN. Our unframed canvas is a reduction of the 1692 May, now in the Saint-Antoine chapel in Lyon's Saint-Jean cathedral, which is almost four metres high (François Marandet, catalogue of the exhibition Arnould de Vuez peindre en Flandres sous Louis XIV, Cambai and Saint-Omer museums, December 2020 - April 2021, p. 52 and 53). Several preparatory drawings are known to exist in the Louvre, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille and in private collections. When a May for Notre-Dame was commissioned by the Parisian goldsmiths' guild, it was customary for the contract to call for two smaller autograph replicas for the goldsmiths' governors. The composition of these replicas, which should not be confused with sketches, follows that of the large painting fairly closely. We know of many examples of similar size to ours, about a metre high, by other artists (Delphine Bastet, Les Mays de Notre-Dame de Paris 1630-1697, Paris, Arthena, 2021, pp.135-139). Arnould de Vuez trained in Saint-Omer, then in Paris in the studio of Frère Luc, before travelling to Italy, where he copied the Venetians and Raphael. On his return to Paris, he was protected by Charles Le Brun and admitted to the Académie Royale in 1681. Eleven years later, he painted our May for Notre-Dame Cathedral. After Le Brun's death, he moved to Lille in 1694, where he received a number of important commissions. He decorated the region's religious monuments with vast canvases, in which he combined the lessons of the classicism of Poussin and Le Brun with Ruben's influence.