Jean Jouvenet

Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet (; 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. 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.

Gallery

Rediscoveries

Darius and Alexandre, , 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)