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| Simon Vouet Daedalus and Icarus ca. 1625 oil on canvas Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Simon Vouet Time defeated by Hope, Love and Beauty 1627 oil on canvas Prado, Madrid |
"French painting was dominated by a form of Late Mannerism throughout the first quarter of the seventeenth century and the event which inaugurated the new movement was the arrival in 1627 of Vouet, who had been in Italy for fourteen years and brought back a style of Italian painting till then unknown in France. Vouet was born in 1590. At the age of fourteen he is said to have come to England to paint the portrait of a French lady, and in 1611 he accompanied the French ambassador to Constantinople. From there he made his way to Italy, arriving in Venice in 1613. By 1614 he had moved to Rome, which seems to have remained his headquarters till his return to France in 1627, though he may have visited Naples in the early 1620s and certainly spent most of the year 1621 in Genoa, visiting Modena and Bologna on his way back. In 1624 he was elected President of the Roman Academy of St Luke. He is again traceable to Venice in 1627, presumably en route for France. On his arrival in Paris he immediately scored a great success, receiving commissions for the decoration of private houses and churches on a great scale. The arrival of Poussin in 1640 was a threat to his monopoly, but when he returned to Rome in 1642 Vouet was left again in almost unchallenged supremacy, though in his last years advanced opinion probably began to turn against him and in favour of a more classical style. But he seems to have enjoyed wide popularity till his death in 1649."
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| Simon Vouet St Margaret ca. 1620 oil on canvas Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Simon Vouet St Ursula ca. 1620 oil on canvas Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Simon Vouet St John ca. 1622-25 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Simon Vouet St Luke ca. 1622-25 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
"On his arrival in Paris, Vouet seems at first to have been mainly occupied with painting religious subjects, and in this field the style which he brought from Rome was bound to be successful with the French public. The Mannerist upbringing of Parisian connoisseurs would have prevented them from appreciating the naturalism of the Caravaggesques, and the religious atmosphere was not sufficiently enthusiastic and emotional for them to have stomached the full Baroque. But Vouet's compromise manner, Baroque still qualified by a classical tradition, was exactly in tune with the needs of a society whose religion was that of St François de Sales, of Bérulle, and of Olier. For the rest of his career Vouet was overwhelmed with commissions for altarpieces in the churches of Paris . . . "
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| Simon Vouet St Mary Magdalene ca. 1630 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art |
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| Simon Vouet Allegory of Wealth ca. 1630-35 oil on canvas Louvre, Paris |
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| Simon Vouet Allegory of Virtue ca. 1634 oil on canvas Louvre, Paris |
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| Simon Vouet Diana 1637 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Simon Vouet Madonna and Child 1633 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Simon Vouet Virgin and Child with an Angel 1642 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Simon Vouet Holy Family ca. 1646 oil on canvas private collection |
"Vouet's influence on French painting was greater than his real quality as an artist might lead one to expect. His success depended on his bringing in a suitable new Italian idiom at the moment when it was needed, and on his skill in undertaking all sorts of tasks. . . . He was supple, brilliant, rapid, adaptable. Like Le Vau's, his artistic conscience was not very sensitive, and his works suffer from a certain superficiality. But he brought new life to French painting when it was at a very low ebb; he introduced a solid tradition of competence; and he managed to inspire a generation of pupils who were to carry on his work in a remarkable way."
– quoted passages are by Anthony Blunt from Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700, originally published in 1953
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| Simon Vouet Young man with a sword ca. 1645 oil on canvas Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Frédéric Désiré Hillemacher after Simon Vouet Self-portrait of Vouet 1854 etching, based on a painting Philadelphia Museum of Art |