Monday, February 11, 2019

Simon Vouet (1590-1649) - Career in Paris (1630s)

Simon Vouet
Allegory of Virtue
ca. 1634
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Simon Vouet
Diana
1637
oil on canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Simon Vouet
Gaucher de Châtillon, Connétable
ca. 1632-34
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

"In 1627 Vouet returned to Paris, called back to France by Louis XIII.  He was named First Painter to the King, lodged in the Louvre, and flooded with major commissions, a great many of which have been destroyed, lost, or dismantled and dispersed.  For the queen mother, Marie de' Medici, Vouet worked on the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace (lost), and later he was employed by Anne of Austria.  For the king, he made tapestry cartoons, drew pastel portraits of the court, and contributed to the decoration of royal residences.  . . .  Cardinal Richelieu, a prodigious patron, engaged Vouet's services in 1632 to contribute to the Gallery of Illustrious Men [one example directly above] in the Palais Cardinal and to decorate his residences outside Paris (mostly destroyed).  . . .  Vouet was perpetually employed in the townhouses and country châteaux of the ministry, the aristocracy, and other men of wealth.  Little survives from such ambitious projects.  . . .  Vouet was the dominant figure in French painting in the 1630s and into the early 1640s.  He developed a novel palette of high-key colors and daring juxtapositions of hue, especially lemon yellow and gold, chilly hues, and hot oranges.  He devised a distinctive female type, ample and mild with delicate, even features and fine pointed noses.  His mastery of drawing the human figure enabled him to render difficult foreshortenings seemingly without effort.  With its indeterminate perspective and spatial flexibility, Vouet's mode was perfectly adapted for the kind of interior he was repeatedly called upon to decorate, in which individual panels and canvases were incorporated into an ornamental enframement."

– from the artist's biography in the Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Simon Vouet
Muses Urania and Calliope
ca. 1634
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Simon Vouet
Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence
ca. 1630-40
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Simon Vouet
Euterpe, Muse of Lyric Poetry and Music
ca. 1630-40
oil on panel
private collection

Simon Vouet
Lot and his Daughters
1633
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Simon Vouet
Allegory of Wealth
1630-35
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Simon Vouet
Aeneas and Anchises fleeing Troy
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
San Diego Museum of Art

Simon Vouet
Entombment
ca. 1635-38
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Simon Vouet
St Mary Magdalene
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art

Simon Vouet
Madonna and Child
1633
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Simon Vouet
Creusa carrying the Gods of Troy
ca. 1635
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Simon Vouet
Portrait of Young Woman with Pearl Earrings
ca. 1632-35
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago