Claude Simpol

He was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc on 23 March 1695[2] and won several prizes (including the second prize in the 1687 prix de Rome for Noah's Flood) at the Académie royale, to which he was admitted on 30 April 1701.

Specialising in grisailles, he was listed on 2 March 1709 as still not having provided his academy work, whose subject was Neptune's Dispute with Minerva, or the Naming of the City of Athens.

He was described by Pierre-Jean Mariette as an artist who had "little love for work" and who adopted "bad conduct, which continually forced him to struggle with need:.

[4] He also worked for the publisher Jean Mariette, who commissioned fashion plates, pastoral scenes and religious images from him.

[5] These include a set of twelve scenes of rural subject matter, once thought to be by Jacques Stella, representing the months,[6] and a number of illustrations for Les Vies des SS.