Jacques Blanchard

Jacques Blanchard brought Venetian colour to Paris. His paintings of Charity, Venus, bacchanals and holy families have warm golden flesh, silvery light and soft, glowing shadows learned from Titian and Veronese, which later earned him the nickname the French Titian.

Born in Paris in 1600, he trained with his uncle Nicolas Bollery and worked in Lyon before travelling to Rome in 1624 and on to Venice, where he spent about three years and his style matured. He returned to France in 1629 and in the 1630s became one of the leading painters in Paris, decorating private houses and painting altarpieces. He died in 1638, aged only 38. Several versions of his Allegory of Charity survive, including one in the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, and his Bacchanal is in Nancy.

In his Charity, look at how the mother and children are modelled in soft, warm light.