1600 -1638 · Paris, Venice and baroque color

Pearly carnations, warm fabrics and sensual allegories earned Jacques Blanchard the nickname French Titian, at the heart of the Parisian pictorial revival of the 1630s.

Jacques Blanchard was born in Paris in 1600 into a family of artists. He received his first apprenticeships from his uncle Nicolas Bollery, then left the capital at a very young age. After a stay in Lyon, he went to Italy in the mid-1620s. Rome brought him the culture of great composition, but it was above all Venice which transformed his painting. Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto revealed to him a color based on warm accords, luminous flesh and draperies which seemed to breathe. Back in Paris around 1629, Blanchard immediately distinguished himself from a French school still very attached to drawing and chiaroscuro. Cimon and Ephigenes, inspired by Boccaccio's Decameron, brings together sensual nudity, red fabrics and vegetation in a scene where beauty acts as a moral revelation. Angélique and Médor transpose chivalrous poetry in the same way in a tender and colorful atmosphere. Religious and private sponsors soon sought this Venetian language adapted to Parisian taste. In La Charité of 1633, a woman surrounded by children soon became both a Christian allegory and a maternal presence. The ancient ruins, the calm monumentality and the gentleness of the gestures give virtue human strength. Blanchard treats the theme several times, proof of his success in the spirituality of the time. His Holy Families associate the same warmth of skin tones with a balanced composition, more intimate than triumphant. He also received large decorations for private mansions and public buildings, which have now largely disappeared. The brevity of his career explains why his preserved corpus remains limited and sometimes difficult to distinguish from that of his brother Jean or his imitators. Appointed painter to the king, Blanchard died in Paris in 1638, at only thirty-eight years old. His art, however, occupied a decisive place: before the domination of classicism, he introduced into France a way of thinking about painting through color, flesh and the poetry of fabric. The "Jacques Blanchard" selection notably compares La Charity and Cimon and Ephigenes. His reading favors the material.

Blanchard does not copy Venice: he brings its warmth back to Paris, then transforms the color into maternal sweetness, desire and virtue.