Jacques Blanchard

Jacques Blanchard (1600-1638) was a native of Paris and a contemporary of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. After spending two years in Rome and two in Venice, he returned to Lyon in 1828 and to Paris in 1829. In Paris, Blanchard “embarked on a successful and prosperous career as a history and decorative painter” until his death in 1638. His most notable religious paintings included St. John on Patmos (1630), St. Jerome (1632), and multiple versions of the Allegory of Charity (1637). Blanchard’s painting style alternated between two tendencies he had absorbed during his years in Italy: “the Bolognese, cool in color and polished in handling, and the Venetian, warm, sensuous, and coloristic.” Although Jacques Blanchard died a decade before the formation of the Académie Royale, his son Gabriel (1630-1704) was received as a member in 1663 after submitting Allegory of the Birth of Louis XIV, a painting which “shows the influence of Charles Le Brun both in the style and in its use of allegory” (Bajou, 125, 126).