Claude Vignon

[1] During a period of study in Italy, he became exposed to many new artistic currents, in particular through the works of Caravaggio and his followers, Guercino, Guido Reni and Annibale Caracci.

He received his initial artistic training in Paris from the Mannerist painter Jacob Bunel, a representative of the Second School of Fontainebleau.

Here he formed part of the French community of painters, including Simon Vouet and Valentin de Boulogne, both prominent members of the Caravaggisti, artists working in a style influenced by Caravaggio.

Claude Vignon was a very versatile artist who assimilated elements of various styles from Mannerism to Venetian, Dutch and German art.

Important influences on his style were the works of the Venetian Caravaggesque painter Domenico Fetti, the German Adam Elsheimer, and the Dutchmen Jacob Pynas, Pieter Lastman and many others.

The multiple influences have made his work enigmatic, contradictory, complex and hard to define within a single term or style.

[7] In the mid 1620s he vacillated between various styles, in some paintings showing a more Caravaggist bent such as in the Christ among the doctors (1623, Museum of Grenoble) or the Vision of St Jerome (1616, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm).

Other works are more reserved, while some have a clear Baroque vigor such as the Triumph of St Ignatius (1628, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans).

A pivotal work from this period is the Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (1624, Louvre), which displays his taste for the exotic and for theatrical arrangements and uses a thick, encrusted impasto, shot through with golden highlights and an unusual combination of colours.

He relied on an original technique by executing his work in two successive stages: first he made a quick outline of the composition and then he painstakingly rendered the fabrics and jewelry, giving the material greater consistency and relief.

His compositions are bathed in a strange, sepulchral moonlight and executed in shimmering, encrusted paint which sometimes takes on the appearance of intricately chased silver.