JOUVENET, JEAN-BAPTISTE, known as LE GRAND. — The best-known representative of a family of artists, born in Rouen in 1644, died in Paris in 1717. He moved to Paris in 1661 and attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts as a pupil of the painter Le Brun, with whom he collaborated in 1673 on some decorations at Versailles. In 1676 he obtained the chair of painting at the Academy, of which he became rector in 1707.
Stricken by severe paralysis, he never ceased painting, and in 1713 executed with his left hand alone the large canvases of the Magnificat for the Choir of the cathedral of Notre-Dame. J. is considered among the greatest French painters of the late 17th century, and is certainly the most fortunate and imaginative composer of sacred subjects. Because of his Italianate tendency, derived from his master’s school and from his careful study of Poussin’s works, he was called the Carracci of France, but soon felt the influence of Rubens, as in the Crucifixion of 1697, now in the Louvre, and revealed himself as a painter endowed with a personal taste, especially in his later works, in which he shows a remarkable attention to nature, almost always studied from life.