Page 17 - Jacques Blanchard - Myth and Allegory
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bordering even on atticsme, into his Bullion. Claude de Bullion, was Surintendent
composition, while still retaining his des finances under Louis XIII, and one of the
characteristic sensuality, especially in the richest and most powerful figures in Paris.
figure of Charité, herself.23 From the For his hôtel, which was possibly (if only
following year, came one of Blanchard most partially) built according to designs by Louis
important commissions, the Pentecost painted Le Vau25, Bullion commissioned Blanchard
as the May of 1634 for the Cathédrale Notre- and Vouet to produce several series of
Dame de Paris, where it remains.24 As is so decorations, to which Blanchard apparently
often the case when artists receive an official contributed a cycle of the twelve months.The
commission, they change their style radically months were to be depicted as twelve classical
in order to fit the requirements of the personifications within landscape settings
commission, both in terms of the patron’s which illustrated their place in the cycle of
taste and its intended location; Blanchard is the four seasons. Unlike the fourteen works
no exception. In the case of the annual May, commissioned by Le Barbier, the Bullion
not all of which survive from the different canvases were supposed to be uniform in size,
artists commissioned, Blanchard has modified save for February and August, which were to
his by now characteristic style, quite be larger allegories of Neptune and Ceres
extensively. The figures have lost all their respectively and were to be positioned on the
accustomed sensuality, befitting the subject end walls of the galerie. According to
matter, but what has been substituted is a Dézallier d’Argenville’s detailed descriptions,
baroque energy communicated by the it must have been a singularly ambitious
emotional focus, which remains exclusively project, although once again, there is no
within the composition. Blanchard appears to visual evidence for the appearance of the
have attempted in this commission, which by pictures themselves.26
the demands of scale, purpose and subject
matter is practically restricted to the The next surviving dated picture is the Charity
dogmatic and communal, to produce a work of 1635, which appeared on the London art
that is instead contemplative and personal, market in 1992.27 Here, we can see little
whereby the viewer is allowed to not only discernable change in the artist’s stylistic
observe, but to understand. development since the Louvre Charité of
1633, and although of modest dimensions,
The same year also saw Blanchard’s major the picture was presumably of some
decorative commission for the hôtel de importance as it was engraved by Antoine
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