“As a stag runs to the fountains”: Miniature painting on vellum.

[Miniature painting on vellum]. Comme le cerf court aux fontaines / Pressé de soif et de chaleur / Ainsi je cours vers vous Seigneur / Adoucissez enfin mes peines. S.l.: s.n., s.a. [late 17th or 18th century]. [9.5 x 6.7 cm], [1] f. miniature painting on vellum, with highlights in gold. Manuscript initials on verso, faint mounting stains on verso, colors still quite fresh. 
 
 
Unusual miniature painting on vellum—likely made in France during the late 17th or early 18th century—depicting within an oval a stag running toward a fountain. The scene takes place in a landscape featuring a castle or chateau on a lake or surrounded by a moat. A winged heart is in the sky above. 
 
In the bottom half of the sheet are four lines of French verse, which may be translated, “As the stag runs to the fountains / Pressed by thirst and heat / So I run to you, Lord / At last sooth my sorrows.”
 
These lines—clearly influenced by Psalm 42:1— are a popular stanza from a longer poem that was apparently first printed from the 1690s under the title “Stances chrétiennes pour s’élever à Dieu par la considerations des Créatures” (see, e.g., the sheets printed in Brussels, chez Lambert Marchant, 1693). In the 18th century, the poem was called “Louange à Dieu par les creatures,” while in 19th century it was can be found under the title “Benissez le Seigneur supreme”; the poem was meant to be sung to the tune of “Quand le péril est agréable.”
 
Here the quatrain has been coopted to form an emblem by mixing courtly/secular imagery (hart and heart) and a sacred sentiment (Sacred Heart, etc.).
 
 
I know of no other miniature paintings (or printed images) of this scene.