Jacques Blanchard

At the end of October 1624, Blanchard travelled to Rome in the company of his brother Jean, where it is possible that he encountered such contemporaries as Simon Vouet, Jacques Stella, Claude Mellan and Nicolas Poussin.

While Blanchard’s travels and encounters in Italy between 1624 and 1629 are relatively well-documented, all that is really known of his actual output during this period comes down to us through accounts by the French historian, architect and theorist André Félibien, and the writer Charles Perrault.

Blanchard’s first major French commission is his earliest surviving dated work, the Virgin with the Christ Child Giving the Keys to St Peter (Albi Cathedral), painted in Lyon in 1629.

While these works no longer survive, they were recorded by Dézallier d’Argenville in his Abrégé of 1762, wherein the writer recalls that Blanchard executed fourteen compositions with mythological and literary themes.

In addition to his religious, literary and mythological subjects, Blanchard was also a sensitive portrait painter, and in his short career played a leading part in the development of French painting in general during the 1630s.

In these allegorical and mythological works vividly illustrate Blanchard’s sensitive approach to colour and light and possess a delicacy of sentiment that is perhaps nearer to the 18th rather than to the 17th century.