Jean Jouvenet

Jean Jouvenet
Portrait by Jean Tortebat, 1699
Born	1 May 1644 Rouen, France
Died	5 April 1717 (aged 72) Paris, France
Director of the Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture
In office 1705–1708
Monarch	Louis XIV
Preceded by	Antoine Coysevox
Succeeded by	François de Troy

Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ batist ʒuvnɛ]; 1 May 1644 – 5 April 1717) was a French painter, especially of religious subjects.

Biography

He was born into an artistic family in Rouen. His first training in art was from his father, Laurent Jouvenet; a generation earlier, his grandfather, Noel Jouvenet, may have taught Nicolas Poussin.

Jouvenet early showed a remarkable aptitude for his profession, and on arriving in Paris, attracted the attention of Le Brun, by whom he was employed at Versailles, notably in the Salon de Mars (1671–74), and under whose auspices, in 1675, he became a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, of which he was elected professor in 1681, and one of the four perpetual rectors in 1707. He also worked under Charles de La Fosse in the Invalides and Trianon. Jouvenet was later Director of the Académie from 1705 to 1708.

The great mass of works that he executed, chiefly in Paris, many of which, including his celebrated Miraculous Draught of Fishes (engraved by Jean Audran) are now in the Louvre, show his fertility in invention and execution, and also that he possessed in a high degree that general dignity of arrangement and style which distinguished the school of Le Brun. Anthony Blunt found in Jouvenet's manner reminiscences of Poussin, Le Sueur, and the late work of Raphael, but with a characteristic Baroque emotionalism that "is still far from the full Baroque... His compositions are primarily planned as high reliefs, and the movements are in sharp diagonal straight lines rather than in curves." The naturalism of Jouvenet's style sets his work apart from most of the religious paintings of his time.

Jouvenet died on 5 April 1717, having been forced by paralysis during the last four years of his life to work with his left hand.

Rediscoveries

• Darius and Alexandre, c. 1670, graphite on blue paper, study for the canvas offered to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand (Paris) by the King Louis XIV in 1674 (rediscovered in 2006 by Alain Béjard & Dimitri Joannidès, Alicem Institute, Luxemburg)

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Jean Jouvenet — Surnamed THE GREAT.

French painter, b. at Rouen in 1644, d. at Paris, 5 April, 1717. In his family, of Italian extraction, the painting instinct was hereditary. Noel Jouvenet, his grandfather who had settled in Normandy, is believed to have been the teacher of Poussin, while to Laurent Jouvenet, his father, Jean owed his early instruction in art, before he was sent by him to Paris in 1660. At that time the goldsmiths' guild in the city planted a tree each year on 1 May in the enclosure of Notre Dame, and presented a painting for the altar of Our Lady. The greatest artists of the age painted some of these works, which were known as mais. Jouvenet executed the painting for the year 1673, the subject being the "Cure of the Paralytic". His performance attracted the attention of Lebrun, who enrolled the author in the group of artists then engaged in decorating the palace of Versailles, under the direction of the "premier peintre". Jouvenet was elected to the Academy in 1675, and was appointed professor in 1681. However it was not till some time later, after the death of Lebrun (1692), that he came into prominence. In truth, French painting hitherto almost completely under the influence of the Italian schools, and following under Lebrun the tradition of Rome and Bologna, was just commencing to free itself. A new tradition, traceable to Rubens, who had in 1628 painted in the Palais du Luxembourg (the famous Galerie de Medicis, now in the Louvre), was daily gaining strength. Artists were divided into "Rubenists" and "Poussinists", the partisans of form and the champions of color. This artistic strife continued during the whole of the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV. Jouvenet played a decisive part in the struggle. Never having been in Italy, he could form an impartial judgment of the merits and claims of the Roman school. With La Fosse and Antoine Coypel, he was one of those who contributed most to the work of transformation, which resulted in the rise of the eighteenth century school of artists.

Jouvenet's paintings for the Salons of 1699 and 1704 were the manifesto of the new school. The most important of them are preserved in the Louvre. The first is the famous "Descent from the Cross" (1697), which hangs in the Salon Carré-a free translation ot Rubens' masterpiece in the cathedral of Antwerp. Eloquent and impressive, distinguished by a sentiment of massiveness and color, and by its tonality at once low and elaborate, it was destined to exert a profound influence on the school. With the painting by Largillière in St-Etienne du Mont (1696), it occupies a most important place in the history of French painting, in which it is one of the principal dates. In the Salon of 1704 Jouvenet presented the four works, each twenty feet long, intended for the church of St-Martin des Champs (but now in the Louvre): "The Repast at the House of Simon", "The Expulsion of the Sellers from the Temple", and especially the "Raising of Lazarus" and the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes". Attention has often been called to the fact that the artist went to Dieppe expressly to prepare himself to execute this last-named picture. We might point out also that it is strongly reminiscent of the Rubens preserved in Mechlin. Louis XIV was so delighted with these works that he had them reproduced in tapestry by the Gobelins, and it was this tapestry that impressed Tsar Peter the Great so much in 1717, that he wished to take it away with him, believing it to be the greatest of masterpieces. Meanwhile Jouvenet, who was now the recognized head of the new school, was selected to work at the two decorative groups which express most accurately the characteristics of the new tradition: the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides (1700-6) and the chapel of Versailles (1709). For the former he painted twelve colossal figures of the Apostles, and for the latter, over the royal tribune, a "Descent of the Holy Ghost".

Jouvenet was director of the Academy from 1705 till l708. In 1713 he was stricken with apoplexy and his right hand became paralyzed. Far from being discouraged by this, he actually acquired, though now seventy years of age, a facility for painting with his left hand, and thus executed his last two works, the ceiling in the Palais de Justice at Rouen (it has now perished, there remains only a sketch of it preserved in the Louvre) and the "Magnificat" in the choir of Notre-Dame. Jouvenet is far from being a great master, but he is a striking personality in the realms of art. His works, theatrical and often declamatory, but honest and powerful, do not excite emotion, though one can still easily understand their great historic importance. They taught painting to the French school which had forgotten it. The whole body of great decorators in the eighteenth century-men like Coypel, de Troy, Restout, Van Loo, and Doyen-follow in his footsteps, and Ingres was not mistaken in grouping them under the title of the "School of Jouvenet". His chief paintings outside the Louvre are in the galleries of Amiens, Rouen, Nancy, Grenoble, Nantes, Rennes, and Toulouse. We have still some admirable portraits by him, as that of Fagon, physician to Louis XIV (in the Louvre) and that of Bourdaloue-now only known by the engraving, which has given rise to so much discussion as to whether the great orator preached with his eyes closed.

D'ARGENVILLE, Abrege de la vie des plus fameux peintres, IV (Paris, 1762); Memoires inedits sur les Membres de 1'Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, II (Paris, 1854); BLANC, Hist. des Peintres. Ecole Francaise, I (Paris, 1865); FELIBIEN, Description de l'eglise royale des Invalides (Paris, 1706); BELLIER DE LA CHAVIGNERIE, Dict. generale des artistes de l' Ecole francaise, I (Paris, l882); MARCEL, La Peinture francaise de 1690 a 1721 (Paris, 1905); LERCY, Hist. de Jouvenet (Paris, 1860).

Bibliography

• Blunt, Anthony, & Beresford, Richard (1999). Art and architecture in France, 1500-1700. Yale University Press Pelican history of art. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07748-3
• Descamps, J.-B., & Dézallier d'Argenville, A.-J. (1840). Vie des peintres flamands et hollandais. Marseille (J. Barile). OCLC 11486087
• Memoires inedits de l'acad. roy. de peinture. et de sculpture, 1854

External links

• 4 artworks by or after Jean Jouvenet at the Art UK site: Four paintings by Jouvenet in British national collections