FLANDRIN, JEAN-HYPPOLITE. — Born in Lyons on 23 March 1809, died in Rome on 31 March 1864. After studying in his native city from 1829, he went to Paris to the Academy, a pupil of Ingres. Three years later he was in Rome, drawn by the art of the early Renaissance and the painting of Raphael.
It was in Rome that he began to turn toward that kind of painting with a religious spirit which he was never again to abandon throughout his life. In 1837, in fact, F. painted a St Clare Healing the Blind for the cathedral of Nantes, and, returning to France, he began a vast and highly esteemed activity as a fresco painter.
Among his works may be recalled: the paintings in the chapel of St Joseph in the church of St-Severin (1840–41), those in the choir of the church of St-Germain-des-Prés in Paris (1842–46), those in the church of St Paul at Nîmes, others in the church of St Vincent de Paul, and in 1855 he painted the apse of St Martin d’Ainay at Lyons; finally, between 1856 and 1861, twenty scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the nave of the Parisian church of St-Germain-des-Prés.
F., besides these works of a religious character, excelled in the art of portraiture, and many of his works are preserved in the principal museums of France and also in Italy. He was a purist painter, yet faithful to the teachings of Ingres which one may say he never forgot. And even when he was drawn into the orbit of Roman purism, characterized by the activity of the Nazarenes, he was able to maintain a tone of great formal and graphic dignity of French taste, which was undoubtedly his best quality.