BLANCHET, Louis-Gabriel

(b. 1705 Paris, d. 1772 Roma)

French painter, active in Rome. He won second place in the Prix de Rome competition in 1727 and thereafter settled in Rome, where he enjoyed the patronage of Nicolas Vleughels, Director of the Académie de France, and the Duc de Saint-Aignan (1684-1776), who at that time was French Ambassador to the Holy See. A virtuoso portraitist, Blanchet painted many of the likenesses of the leading social and political figures in Rome of the day,

In 1752 Blanchet painted the Vision of Constantine (Paris, Louvre), a copy of Giulio Romano’s fresco in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican. However, he was primarily a portrait painter: his portrait of Tolozan de Montfort (1756; Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts) is a fine example of his elegant, rather nervous style and his distinctive use of colour. Other surviving works of his include St. Paul (signed and dated 1757; Avignon, Musée Calvet) and his full-length portrait of Fathers Lesueur and Jacquier (1772; Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts). His last documented work was an allegory of Painting and Sculpture (1762; untraced).

His work as a portrait painter has been compared with that of his Roman contemporary Pompeo Girolamo Batoni.

Portrait of a Gentleman

During the eighteenth century portraiture in Rome developed a distinctive, cosmopolitan style as practitioners from outside the city dominated the field: the Frenchman Pierre Subleyras, the Lucchese Pompeo Batoni, the Bohemian Anton Raphael Mengs and Austrian Anton von Maron. One reason for this diversity was Rome’s prominence as a place of artistic and educational pilgrimage for young artists and travellers from other European nations undertaking the ‘Grand Tour’.

The painting probably depicts a foreign visitor to Rome proudly holding a book, a prop suggestive of both learning and the implicit educational function of travel in the mid-eighteenth century.

The portrait is illustrative of both the distinctive Roman style and mode of ‘Grand Tour’ portraiture.

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Portrait of the Artist Giovanni Paolo Pannini

This portrait is the only known stand-alone portrait of Giovanni Paolo Pannini, the great painter of Roman views. Pannini did paint likenesses of himself but only as one of many characters in several of his own narrative works.

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Portraits of Fathers Lesueur and Jacquier

The picture represents the Minimite Friars Lesueur and Jacquier, mathematicians and astronomers in Rome.

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