Page 9 - Jacques Blanchard - Myth and Allegory
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JACQUES BLANCHARD
MYTH & ALLEGORY
The true French artistic tradition of a meticulous examination of the artist’s
the middle years of the 17 th surviving works, as well as copies and
Century was the baroque, and its engravings after, contemporary commentary,
epicentre was incontestably, Paris. archival evidence, and recent scholarship,
The renewal of patronage and production Thuillier joined together the various threads
during the reign of Louis XIII, after decades of of discourse and research, reuniting the work
Huguenot iconoclasm and civil war, resulted of Blanchard scholars and connoisseurs, past
in one of the most luxurious and artistically and present, and finally permitting us a
liberated - if all too brief - periods in French clearer appreciation of this remarkable
art. Within this brief period, for a mere ten painter.
years, Jacques Blanchard painted some of the
most sophisticated and truly baroque works in Throughout his career - insofar as we know it
French painting. Charles Perrault called him from his surviving work - Blanchard appears
the ‘le Titien français’1, and André Félibien prima facie to have alternated between two
stated that he reintroduced ‘le bon goût’2 in distinct affinities: that for the cool polish of
French painting, and yet by the beginning of the Bolognese painters, and for the sensual
the 19th century, Blanchard’s importance in dynamism of the Venetians. His perceived
French art had been marginalised, if not ability to strike a balance between these two
effectively forgotten. It was not until the marking his distinct contribution to French
pioneering scholarship of Louis Demonts and painting. But the ‘Querelles’ of later
later, and more importantly, that of Charles generations aside, it has not always been
Sterling that any understanding of Blanchard’s possible to appreciate Blanchard’s place in
importance began to re-emerge. When French art of the 17 th century, possibly
Jacques Thuillier mounted his landmark because unlike his closest contemporary,
monographic exhibition of the artist in 1998, Simon Vouet, there is little if any connection
this imbalance was finally redressed.Through between Blanchard and Nicolas Poussin. If
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