Simon Vouet

>Simon Vouet 2005-05-01T02:48:48Z FlaBot warnfile Adding:sv [[Image:SVouetRichesse.jpg |thumb|220px|right|Vouet's allegory ''La Richesse'' was painted ''ca'' 1640 for one of the royal [[chateau]]x of France ([[Louvre Museum|Louvre]])]] '''Simon Vouet''' ([[1590]] - [[1649]]) was the French painter and draftsman who introduced the Italian [[Baroque]] style to France. A French contemporary, lacking the term "Baroque," said, "In his time the art of painting began to be practiced here in a nobler and more beautiful way than ever before," and the allegory of ''"Riches"'' (''illustration, right'') demonstrates a new heroic sense of volumes, a breadth and confidence without decorative mannerisms. Vouet's new style was distinctly Italian, after his years of study in Italy, from [[1613]] to [[1627]], mostly in Rome where the Baroque style was originating in these years, but he also visited Venice, Bologna, where the [[Annibale Caracci|Caracci]] had their academy, and Genoa and Naples. Vouet was a natural [[Academy|academic]], who studied and absorbed everything in his environment and distilled them: [[Michelangelo Merisi|Caravaggio]] dramatic lighting, Italian Mannerism, Paolo Veronese's color, and the art of the Carracci, Guercino, and Guido Reni. Famous and respected, he was president of Rome's ''Accademia di San Luca'', when [[Louis XIII of France|Louis XIII]] called him to France. In Paris, Vouet was the fresh dominating force, painting public altarpieces and allegorical decors for private patrons. Vouet's atelier produced a whole school of French painters for the following generation, and through Vouet French Baroque painting retained a classicizing restraint from the outset. Compare French Baroque artists [[Philippe de Champaigne]], [[Nicolas Poussin]] and above all, [[Charles le Brun]], his most influential pupil, who organized all the interior decorative painting at [[Versailles]] and dictated official style at the court of [[Louis XIV of France]], but who jealously excluded Vouet from the Académie Royale in [[1648]]. Vouet's other students included [[Valentin de Boulogne]], the main figure of the French [[Michelangelo Merisi|''"Caravaggisti"'']], [[Pierre Mignard]], [[Eustache Le Sueur]], Nicolas Chaperon, Claude Mellan and the Flemish artist Abraham Willaerts. ==External link== *[http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a223-1.html Getty Museum website:] Simon Vouet [[Category:French painters|Vouet, Simon]] [[Category:1590 births|Vouet, Simon]] [[Category:1649 deaths|Vouet, Simon]] [[de:Simon Vouet]] [[fr:Simon Vouet]] [[ru:Вуэ, Симон]] [[sv:Simon Vouet]]