Venus and Adonis

Simon Vouet brought the grand Italian Baroque style to Paris. His paintings are full of warm colour, soft flesh, swirling drapery and elegant allegorical figures, and he made them for royal palaces, churches and the town houses of the rich. Born in Paris, he spent about fourteen years in Italy, mostly in Rome, where he learned from Caravaggio’s dramatic light and from Veronese’s colour and became a leading painter there. In 1627 Louis XIII called him home and made him First Painter to the King. He became the most important artist in Paris, and his workshop trained Charles Le Brun, Eustache Le Sueur and Pierre Mignard. Many of his large decorative schemes were later destroyed, so his easel paintings matter all the more. Allegory of Prudence and Allegory of Virtue show his taste for graceful female figures with symbolic objects. Look for the rich colour and the easy, confident movement of the forms.