Jean-Baptiste Regnault

At the age of fifteen his talent attracted attention, and he was sent to Italy by M. de Monval under the care of Jean Bardin.

After his return to Paris in 1776, Regnault won the Prix de Rome for his painting Alexandre and Diogène and in 1783 he was elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts.

His diploma picture, The Education of Achilles by Chiron the Centaur is now in the Louvre, as also are his Trois Grâces, Le Déluge, Descente de croix (Christ taken down from the Cross, originally executed for the royal chapel at Fontainebleau)[1] and Socrate arrachant Alcibiade du sein de la Volupté.

His school, which reckoned amongst its attendants Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Louis-Philippe Crépin, Louis Lafitte, Merry-Joseph Blondel, Robert Lefèvre, Henriette Lorimier and Alexandre Menjaud, was for a long while the rival in influence of that of David.

[1] Besides Blondel, Guérin, Lefèvre and Lorimier, Regnault's students included Godefroy Engelmann, Louis Hersent, Charles Paul Landon, Hippolyte Lecomte, Jacques Réattu, Jean-Hilaire Belloc and Anne Nicole Voullemier.

Self-Portrait , c. 1793 –1794, sold at Christie's in June 2011
The Education of Achilles by Chiron the Centaur , 1782, Louvre , Paris
The Judgement of Paris ( Staatsgalerie )
L'origine de la sculpture ou Pygmalion amoureux de sa statue, Palace of Versailles