Page 12 - Jacques Blanchard - Myth and Allegory
P. 12
was also reminiscent of what they still knew traditions he encountered and had avoided
of Fontainebleau artists, such as Martin any slavish imitation of style or effect,
Fréminet. With his vast and well-organised concentrating instead on capably distilling
studio, which included at various times, them into his own tradition.8
artists, assistants, and artisans specialising in
boiseries, and stuccoes, Vouet produced As court painter, quartered in the Louvre,
whole cycles of decorative paintings to Vouet was, by 1629, when Blanchard himself
adorn the increasingly numerous and returned from Rome, the most powerful
elaborate Parisian hôtels.4 Equally, Vouet painter in France. Within only a few years,
could conceive and execute individual these two artists, with their respective styles
paintings to relate to one another as part of and techniques - charged with what they had
a larger whole, a skill which Poussin himself experienced in Italy - transformed French
later found impossible to achieve, when he art, so much so that their influence upon
was asked by Louis XIII to create a such important artists as Eustache Le Sueur
decorative cycle for the Grand Galerie in the (who trained under Vouet) and Laurent de
Louvre. 5 La Hyre (who was influenced by both artists)
encouraged French artists to develop a
eee cooler and incipiently classical style, but
nevertheless to remain in essence, baroque
Vouet’s French period has only recently painters. Both Vouet and Blanchard’s styles,
begun to be understood in detail, along with that of their students, remained
thanks largely to the important monographic highly coloured and emotional in content,
exhibition organised by Jacques Thuillier in even when their subject matter was taken
1990. 6 When he returned from Rome in from classical antiquity. So pervasive was the
1627,Vouet burst upon the French art world Italianate influence that Blanchard and Vouet
fully formed and fully armed with a imported and exercised on the younger
powerful professional reputation, and the generation of French baroque painters, that
excellent appointment of Premier Peintre du some, specifically, Le Sueur and La Hyre, as
Roi to Louis XIII.7 The fact that Vouet had well as Michel Dorigny, actually did not
always been an excellent academician was travel to Italy at all.
probably no small part of his success at this
point. He was both a perceptive student and eee
careful observer of the various Italian
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