SUBLEYRAS, PIERRE. - Painter and engraver, b. at St-Gilles-du-Gard (Languedoc) on 25 Nov. 1699, d. at Rome on 28 May 1749.
Having received his first instruction from his father Matteo, a painter, he studied at Toulouse with Antonio Rivalz. In 1727 he won the prize of the Royal Academy with the Bronze Serpent (Louvre), and the following year he went to Rome as a pensioner, remaining there throughout his life. S. is one of the principal representatives of religious painting in the first half of the eighteenth century in France and Rome. His works reveal an eclectic inspiration, with reminiscences of the Venetians, of Poussin, and above all of the Roman school of the late seventeenth century. Worth mentioning are: the Supper at Simon's House (Louvre, 1739, signed), which S. executed for a convent at Asti; the Mass of St. Basil (Rome, S. Maria degli Angeli, formerly in S. Pietro in Vaticano, where it is replaced by a copy in mosaic), the sketch for which, remarkable for its light colours and soft drawing, is in the Louvre. The painter’s “tenebrous” manner is exemplified by the Miracle of St. Benedict (Rome, S. Francesca Romana, 1744, signed) and the Martyrdom of St. Peter (Louvre). S. was also a vigorous portraitist (Portrait of Pope Benedetto XIV, 1741, in several replicas, one in the Musée Condé at Chantilly, another in the Galleria Spada in Rome) and sometimes took pleasure in painting
genre subjects drawn from La Fontaine’s fables, in accordance with eighteenth-century taste.