Un dessin de Noël Coypel pour Hercule assommant Cacus : une attribution attestée

A drawing by Noël Coypel for Hercules clubbing down Cacus : a certified attribution. This article connects a double study from the nude drawn by Noël Coypel (1628-1707) (Paris, École nationale des Beaux-arts) with a painting in the Lille Museum, Hercules clubbing down Cacus given back to the painter by J. Thuillier, some forty years ago. The drawing, whose composition is almost similar to the painting’s, confirms, at first glance, this attribution. On the other hand, the date 1669 on the Parisian sheet — a nude executed at the life-class at the Academy where he would teach — allows us to give a more precise chronology of the painted work, originally done for the decoration of the antichamber of the petit appartement haut of Louis XIV at the Tuileries, but withdrawn from the palace during the Revolution.