Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist

Until 1986 the Louvre's catalogues gave this picture to Simon Vouet, who had come back from Rome in 1627 to become the king's first painter and the most sought-after artist in Paris. It was an easy mistake to make. Eustache Le Sueur trained in Vouet's studio, and around 1640, when this was painted, he was only beginning to move away from his master's manner. In 1979 the curator Jean-Pierre Cuzin gave it back to Le Sueur, and the historian Alain Mérot confirmed the attribution in 1987. The Louvre points to the colour, soft and slightly hazy, and to the delicate proportions of the Virgin, the Child and the small John the Baptist beside them. It may be the half-length Virgin with the Child and Saint John that an early biographer says Le Sueur painted for a Monsieur Bézard, a treasurer of the royal war funds. Later it belonged to the bishop of Blois and then to the duke of Penthièvre, until the Revolution seized it in 1794. From 1960 to 2010 it hung far from the Louvre, at the château of Rambouillet.