Jean Jouvenet

Jean Jouvenet (1649-1717) came from a family of painters in Rouen; his grandfather Noel Jouvenet may have taught Nicolas Poussin. Jean Jouvenet upon moving to Paris was soon employed in the various decorative schemes of Charles Le Brun. At the age of twenty-nine, he painted the Healing of the Paralytic for the cathedral of Notre Dame, a work so widely admired that he was received as a member of the Académie Royale in 1675. His decorative and religious work was in high demand for the rest of what has been called a “model career.” He became director of the Académie in 1705, the year in which he was about to complete his painting of The Resurrection of Lazarus (1703-06), acquired by Melville in the outline engraving that appeared in the Historical Gallery a century later (Alegret, 670-72).