FRANÇOIS COLOMBE DU LYS (Domrémy?, c. 1595 - Toulouse, 1661) The Good Fortune Signed Francesco Colombo/de Lorraine pingebat on the paper that the young protagonist holds between his fingers Oil on canvas, 180X236 cm The painting has been declared to be of extraordinary artistic and historical interest and subject to notification; it may therefore not be exported from Italy. The painting has been declared of extraordinary historical and artistic interest and subjected to a notification regime, it must stay in Italy and cannot be exported abroad. Bibliography: F. Baldassari, Un nuovo dipinto per François Colombe, caravaggesco lorenese, in Nuovi Studi, 24, 2018-2019, pp. 111-113 The work presented here is a rare testimony of the pictorial production of François Colombe Du Lys, an artist who lived in Toulouse but was active in Rome between the second and third decade of the 17th century, thus belonging to the second generation of French Caravaggesque painters, between George de La Tour and the Le Nain brothers. In addition to its extraordinary quality and grandeur, the painting is distinguished by its beautiful conservation, a refined colour palate and an abstract luminosity that evokes Ter Brugghen as much as La Tour. As far as the painter's Italian sojourn is concerned, Francesca Baldassari believes that it must be placed before 1622, but the chronological points of support are very uncertain, except for pointing out a stylistic declination of Tuscan influence by Andrea Commodi, which the painter may have seen both in Rome and in a plausible Florentine sojourn. That said, the quotations from the States of Souls in which numerous 'Francesco Pittore' or 'Francesco Francese Pittore' are mentioned are not helpful either. It remains to be said that Colombe, while expressing a Caravaggesque narrative, distinguishes himself from his compatriots and followers of the 'Manfrediana methodus' by a direction of light and a chromatic sensibility with a Nordic flavour, evident in the care with which he describes the clothing of the protagonists and the mimesis of the fabrics. It should also be noted that the scene offers a broader narrative than the traditional iconography of the 'Buona ventura', in this case the robbed is not the richly dressed young man, but his servant armed with a rifle, while the second helper with the game, who looks towards us, does not notice the robbery in progress and seems to offer us a real portrait, probably the face of François Colombe himself. Thus, the whole demonstrates the painterly and inventive felicity of the author who, in spite of his young age, succeeds in expressing a very personal creative vein, detached from the Caravaggesque fashion in vogue. Reference bibliography: P. Rosenberg, François Colombe du Lys, un caravagesque romain, in Prospettiva 57/60. Writings in memory of Giovanni Previtali, 1989-1990, II, pp. 241-243