Page 14 - Jacques Blanchard - Myth and Allegory
P. 14
That no painting from this short period has as Blanchard used most effectively in his small
yet been identified makes it impossible for us religious and mythological subjects.
to fully appreciate the immediate influence
that Venetian art had on the development of eee
Blanchard’s style. Equally, while it is easy
enough to imagine the context of the arrival While Blanchard’s travels and
of a young French painter in Rome in the encounters in Italy between 1624 and
1620’s, it is far more difficult to make the 1629 are relatively well-documented, all that
same leap of imagination in contemporary is really known of his actual output during this
Venice. By 1626, when Blanchard arrived, the period comes down to us through Félibien,
great age ofVenetian paintings was over.There and to a lesser extent, through Perrault. Both
were but few survivors of the third and fourth recount, for example, that Blanchard’s
generation of artists continuing the great 16th Venetian oeuvre included subjects from Ovid’s
Century tradition. Nevertheless, even without Metamorphoses, and that he executed a series of
the enthusiasm of living contemporaries, the the Loves of Venus and Adonis in Turin for
effect would have been one of an Charles-Emanuel I, Duke of Savoy, but again,
overwhelming visual impact on a young these works are now sadly lost.
painter and Félibien noted how impressed
Blanchard was by Titian’s work in particular.12 After his tenure inTurin, and following a brief
When Blanchard arrived inVenice, the city had return to Venice in 1629, Blanchard finally
not yet been stripped of such a large returned to France, where he was to remain
proportion of its renaissance painting (this was for the rest of his career. It is within this ten
to come later as a result of the French year span between his return to France and
Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars) and the his death in 1638 that most of his surviving
young artist would have been confronted and works can be dated, including the two
captivated by large series by Titian, Giorgione, paintings under discussion here. But before
Veronese, Palma il Giovane, Bassano and Blanchard made his way back to Paris, he
Tintoretto - just to name the more obvious returned to Lyon via Turin, where he was to
figures - as well as Domenico Fetti and Johann spend some time before he finally arrived in
Liss. In developing his very personal style, Paris at the end of 1629.
Blanchard was to borrow lavishly from Titian
and Tintoretto, and equally from Veronese, eee
whose silvery blond palette and limpid light
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