Trophime Bigot

Bigot has always been known from his documented altarpieces in Provence, but the English art historian Benedict Nicolson was the first to propose that he was identical with the artist called Maître à la chandelle (Candlelight Master), who was active in Rome, producing relatively small candle-lit scenes with heavy but subtle chiaroscuro in a style similar to that of Georges de La Tour.

Nicolson connected a figure documented in Italy as variously Teofili Trufemondi/ Trofamonti/ Troffamondi/ Bigotti with this artist, and suggested these were Italian versions of Bigot's names.

[4] It is now generally accepted that the two artists were the same man, who painted in two different styles according to the different demands of the Roman and Provençal markets, “It seems, however, that Bigot was simply adapting to new circumstances.”[4] and by 1988, after the discovery of new documents, Jean Boyer could assert that the single identity was "universally accepted" and the documents confirmed "beyond any doubt that there was only one French seventeenth-century painter called Trophime Bigot".

[7] After he returned to France, Bigot produced altarpieces, at Arles and at Aix-en-Provence, that are in a very different and more conventional style from the Roman candle-lit works.

As with de la Tour, the same subjects are often repeated in differing compositions, with many St Jeromes and at least four versions of St. Sebastian Aided by St. Irene: in Bordeaux, the Vatican Pinacoteca, Bob Jones University in South Carolina,[9] and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.