Jacques Blanchard

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. The painting shows Bolognese influence in such details as the faces, but is overall still more indebted to the artist’s knowledge of 16th Century Venetian painters. Between 1631 and 1632, he undertook his next important project, the decoration of the Hôtel le Barbier. 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. Admittedly, some doubt lingers as to the exact extent of the literary themes Blanchard explored in his scheme for the Hôtel de Barbier. • Illustration — Tobias Healing the Blindness of His Father The chief influences were the sixteenth century painters, especially Titian and Tintoretto with their rich, warm colours, and Veronese, whose blond and silvery colour and limpid light he used most effectively in his small religious and mythological subjects. The several versions of Charity, depicted as a young woman with two or three children, are excellent examples of his tenderness of colour handling, and of a softness of sentiment nearer to the 18th than to the 17th century. He was also a sensitive portrait painter, and played a leading part in French painting of the 1630s. • Illustration — Danaë 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. Perrault called him the ‘Titian of France’, and Félibien stated that he reintroduced le bon gout to French painting. Blanchard oscillated throughout his career between two distinct tendencies—the cool and polished handling of the Bolognese painters and the more warmly sensuous and warm colourism of the Venetians. But it is perhaps the Venetian element which is particularly evident in the present work. Other similar works are Blanchard’s several versions of Charity, particularly the canvas in Toledo, Ohio and his sensual and complex Bacchanal in Nancy. 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. He died of consumption in Paris in 1638. This painter should not be confused with the French sculptor of the same name who lived from 1634 to 1689.