Simon Vouet
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Simon Vouet (January 9 1590 - June 30 1649) was the French painter and draftsman who helped introduce the Italian Baroque style to France.
A French contemporary, lacking the term "Baroque," said, "In his time the art of painting began to be practiced here in a nobler and more beautiful way than ever before," and the allegory of "Riches" demonstrates a new heroic sense of volumes, a breadth and confidence without decorative mannerisms. Vouet's new style was distinctly Italian, after his years of study in Italy, from 1613 to 1627, mostly in Rome where the Baroque style was originating in these years, but he also visited Venice, Bologna, where the Caracci had their academy, and Genoa and Naples.
Vouet was a natural academic, who studied and absorbed everything in his environment and distilled them: Caravaggio dramatic lighting, Italian Mannerism, Paolo Veronese's color, and the art of the Carracci, Guercino, and Guido Reni. Famous and respected, he was president of Rome's Accademia di San Luca, when Louis XIII called him to France.
In Paris, Vouet was the fresh dominating force, painting public altarpieces and allegorical decors for private patrons. Vouet's atelier produced a whole school of French painters for the following generation, and through Vouet French Baroque painting retained a classicizing restraint from the outset. Compare French Baroque artists Philippe de Champaigne, Nicolas Poussin and above all, Charles le Brun, his most influential pupil, who organized all the interior decorative painting at Versailles and dictated official style at the court of Louis XIV of France, but who jealously excluded Vouet from the Académie Royale in 1648. Vouet's other students included Valentin de Boulogne, the main figure of the French "Caravaggisti", Pierre Mignard, Eustache Le Sueur, Nicolas Chaperon, Claude Mellan and the Flemish artist Abraham Willaerts.
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Works
- The ill-matched couple (Vanitas), c. 1621, from the Roman period was painted in Caravaggesque style (National Museum, Warsaw).
Decorative schemes
- Palais de la Justice
- Palais Cardinal, Musée des hommes illustre
- The Châteaux de Rueil
- Château de La Muette
- Château-Neuf de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, The Four Cardinal Virtues
- Château de Fontainebleau
- Residence of Chancelier Séguier (hôtel)
- Residence of Maréchal de La Meilleraye
- Residence of Président Tuboeuf
- Church of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs à Paris, The Assumption (1629), Apostles at the Tomb of the Virgin
- Church of Saint-Etienne à Chilly-Mazarin, Burial of Christ (1639)
- Hôtel-Bullion
- Church of Saint-Merry à Paris, Saint Merry releasing the Prisoners (1640)
Royal tapestries
- Renaud and Armide, Renaud in the arms of Armide (1630–1660), Louvre
- Moses saved from the waters (Old Testament)
- The Life of Ulysses (labours of Ulysses)
Studio and copies
- Saint Sebastian (1618–1620), Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation (USA)
- Saint Peter visiting Saint Agatha in Prison, 1624
- Intelligence, Memory and Will, Capitoline Museums, Rome
- Virgin and Child à la rose, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille
- Hesselin Virgin and Child, Louvre
- Sainte Marie Madeleine, National Gallery, Rome
- Allegory of the Fine Arts, National Gallery, Rome
- Allegory of Peace, National Gallery, Rome
- Allegory of Charity (1640–1645), Museum of Draguignan
- Diana, Somerset House, London
- Virgin and Child with an Angel, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen
- Suicide of Lucretia, Narodni Gallery, Prague
- Roman Charity, Musée Bonnat, Bayonne
- Burial, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
- Martyrdom of Saint Eustace, church of Saint-Eustache, Paris
- Diana, Royal Collection, Hampton Court
- Hercules among the Olympians, Royal Collection, Hampton Court
- Minerva, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
- Virgin and Child, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
- Virgin and Child, Ashmoleam Museum, Oxford
- Virgin and Child, Musée Magnon, Dijon
- Apollo and the Muses, National Hungarian Museum, Budapest
