French painter, active in Italy. He was a pupil of Guido Reni. He became court painter in Modena where several of his works are conserved in the Galleria Estense. His most famous fresco is in the Palazzo Ducale (Castello Estense) in Modena where he participated in the decoration. In the 1650s he was active in Reggio Emilia and Rome.
A narrative scene painted on a wall as a framed picture was referred to as a “quadro riportato,” which to seventeenth-century thinking suggested that a framed panel painting had been translated into the medium of fresco. The simulated tapestry, first employed in monumental wall pictures by Raphael and his pupils in the painting of the Sala di Constantino in the Vatican, can be thought of as a variant of the quadro riportato. Given the appearance of tapestry, the wall painting took on added richness. At the same time, the simulation of the medium of tapestry in the medium of fresco painting permitted playful trompe-l’oeil effects like those in the Galleria di Bacco at Sassuolo shown in the picture.
Illustration of the scene of the meeting are rare. In the painting by the Reni pupil Jean Boulanger, Cleopatra and her train are standing on the shore as Amor points toward Antony’s approaching fleet, led by a boat filled with cupids.
