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January 25, 2011

“Excuse me, sir, did you paint this?”—student sleuths 300 year-old mystery

Caroline Larson is studying art history, literally; this summer she is researching the provenance of the pictured painting, Adoration of the Shepherds.

Undergrad Caroline Larson is hoping to answer a centuries-old art history question—Adoration of the

Shepherds, who really painted it? The unsigned painting, a recent addition to the BYU Museum of Art’s permanent collection, is thought to be the work of Eustache Le Sueur, who died in 1655. But some measure of doubt exists whether or not the French artist in fact created the piece.

With funding from a mentored-research grant, Larson, an art history major in the College of Fine Arts and Communications, is looking for a definitive answer to this question.

“This type of research cannot be taught in class, yet it is essential to being a good art historian,” Larson says. “Thanks to the ORCA grant I received, I have been able to personally examine historic works of art.”

Larson began her search at the Louvre in Paris, which holds 40 of Le Sueur’s known works. There she compared Le Sueur’s techniques to those of his contemporaries to see if Adoration of the Shepherds reflects his distinctive style.