 |
| Jacques Blanchard Virgin and Child with St Elizabeth and St John the Baptist ca. 1628-29 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Charity ca. 1634-35 oil on canvas Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Charity ca. 1636-37 oil on canvas Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio) |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Medor and Angelica ca. 1630-35 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard St Sebastian succoured by St Irene and Attendants ca. 1630-38 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Venus and Nymphs surprised by a Mortal ca. 1631-33 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"Jacques Blanchard was born in 1600 and was brought up, presumably in the Late Mannerist tradition, by his uncle, the painter Nicolas Bollery. In 1620 he went to Lyons, where he worked for a time under Horace Le Blanc, and in 1624 attained what was no doubt his original goal, Rome. Here he stayed for eighteen months, and in 1626 moved to Venice, where he spent two years, mainly studying Veronese. About 1628 he returned to Paris, stopping on the way to carry out commissions in Turin and Lyons. In the remaining years till his death in 1638 he seems to have achieved a success in painting small religious and mythological subjects, though he also undertook the decoration of a gallery for [Claude de] Bullion, in whose house [Simon] Vouet was also working."
"The dominant influence on Blanchard's formation was certainly the painting he saw in Venice. For his figure types he looked at the followers of the Carracci, but in colour he was inspired by Veronese, whose cool tones and silvery lights he imitated more successfully than Vouet. On his return to Paris he was probably influenced, both in his colour and in his figure drawing, by the works of [Orazio] Gentileschi in the Luxembourg. He seems to have specialized in painting such subjects as Charity, of which many different versions exist [two of them above], all showing the particular type of rather delicate sentiment which appears in almost all his work. In this painting the influence of Veronese is visible not only in the light and colour, but also in the architectural background and in the clear building-up of the group. In other probably earlier paintings, such as the Medor and Angelica in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, he is more Mannerist, borrowing his compositional method from Tintoretto and his treatment of trees from Paul Bril. In yet other paintings, notably Venus and Nymphs surprised by a Mortal in the Louvre, his model is evidently Rubens, whose late nudes he must have known. It would be wrong, however, to think of Blanchard as a mere eclectic, for out of his borrowings he composed a style of his own which makes him one of the most attractive painters of his generation. He was less ambitious than Vouet, but his small, rather intimate canvases have a delicacy lacking in the great decorator."
– Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700, originally published by Anthony Blunt in 1953, revised by Richard Beresford and published by Yale University Press in 1999
 |
| attributed to Jacques Blanchard The Flagellation before 1638 oil on canvas Minneapolis Institute of Art |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Venus and Adonis before 1638 oil on canvas private collection |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Mars and the Vestal Virgin 1638 oil on canvas Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Danaë ca. 1630-33 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyons |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Penitent Magdalen 1637 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard St Cecilia before 1638 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Descent of the Holy Spirit (commissioned for the Mays exhibition) 1634 oil on canvas Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris |
The Mays were a series of paintings in 17th- and early 18th-century Paris. The goldsmiths' guild sponsored the works, annually commissioning a religious painting from a favored artist and specifying that it be offered to the Cathedral of Notre Dame and exhibited there in early May. The tradition began in 1630 and continued with only minor interruptions until 1707.
 |
| Jacques Blanchard Armida before 1638 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes |