Vaulted Classical Interior with Figures Bathing

A French painter and engraver, Pierre-Antoine de Machy was the son of a cabinetmaker and served his apprenticeship with Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni. He was approved by the Academie Royale de Peinture, Paris in 1755 and was received three years later as a painter of architecture. He exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1757 to 1802. His views of the interiors of the Pairs churches of Sainte Genevieve and the Madeleine were painted from architectural plans and exhibited at the Salons of 1761 and 1763 respectively, earning Diderot’s praise. At the Salon of 1763 de Machy also demonstrated his talent for depicting contemporary events with a pair of paintings of the Foire Saint-German after the fire of 1762 (both Paris, Carnavalet) and a scene of the Installation of Bouchardon’s Statue of Louis XV (untraced; engraved by Antoine Francois (Hemery, b 1751), with the statue being placed on its pedestal in the Place Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde). Later, however, de Machy suffered increasingly from comparison with other painters, especially those who had been able to study in Italy. At the Salon of 1765 his Inauguration of Sainte Genevieve and the Building of the Halle au Blé (both Paris, Carnavalet) were overshadowed by Servandoni’s works, and in 1767 his pictures were not as admired as the works of Hubert Robert, who had recently returned from Italy. At this exhibition Diderot found de Machy’s pictures lacking in the quality of handling and Italian light effects that characterized Robert’s painting, which de Machy did not try to emulate.
The talent that enabled de Machy to enter the academy and his skill depicting architecture are evident in this large animated neoclassical rendering of an imaginary scene of his own invention, painted with a sure, but delicate hand, and making evident knowledge of perspective.