Jean Baptiste Santerre 1651 / 1717 Paris, Portrait

Jean-Baptiste Santerre (Magny-en-Vexin, 1651 - Paris 1717) - Portrait

Oil painting on canvas: 50x65cm antique frame: 70x85cm

Written expert opinion: Prof. Emilio Negro

He was a French painter, draftsman and teacher, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Trained at the school of Bon Boullogne and François Lemaire, a portraitist, he worked mainly in Paris between 1666 and 1717. At Versailles he founded a school for female artists. In 1698 he was accepted at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and in 1704 he became a member as a history painter, presenting the painting Susanna in the bathroom, his most famous work. In 1709, on a royal commission, he created, for the chapel of the Palace of Versailles, Santa Teresa in ecstasy, reminiscent of Bernini's sculpture. He devoted himself mainly to the representation of genre and Christian-religious subjects, to the execution of portraits and nudes, for which he was mainly famous. Precursor of Jean-Marc Nattier in the genre of fantastic portraits, he created many sensual images of allegorical or familiar subject, sensuality obtained in large part with a porcelain complexion and rendered in a natural way with gray or cold tones, style that anticipates certain aspects of neoclassicism (Two actresses (1699); Young woman with veil, Portrait of a woman (1701); Maria Adelaide of Savoy, duchess of Burgundy). The subjects of Santerre's works were often of Nordic derivation, such as musicians, women who read letters, smokers and cooks. To these were added pilgrims, Espagnolettes and women dressed in masks. Another motif present in his works was the candlelight lighting, inspired by Gerrit Dou and Godfried Schalcken. He was the subject of slander and discredited for the sensual nature of his religiously inspired works.