St. Bruno Visited by Count Roger in the Wilderness of Calabria

Licherie's greatest achievement was a decorative cycle devoted to St. Bruno, the eleventh-century founder of the Carthusian order, for the Charterhouse of Bourgfontaine, located in northern France near the Belgian border. The cycle was almost entirely destroyed during the Revolution and thus little known, and Licherie's drawings were long attributed to Le Sueur. Licherie's work echoes the academic style of Le Brun, who supported the younger artist and appointed him to head the drawing school at the Gobelins tapestry manufactory in 1667. This working compositional drawing shows the saint being visited by Duke Roger of Calabria, whose offer to make Bruno archbishop is refused. -- Exhibition Label, From "Poussin, Claude, and French Drawing in the Classical Age"