Pierre Mignard I

France·1612-1695

Pierre Mignard (1612–1695) was a French painter born in Troyes, trained in Bourges under Jean Boucher and later in Simon Vouet's Paris studio before leaving for Rome in 1635. His two decades there earned him the nickname 'Mignard le Romain'; he built a reputation on devotional images of the Madonna and Child, so popular they were nicknamed 'Mignardises', alongside altarpieces and portraits of popes, cardinals, and Roman nobility. Summoned back to Paris around 1657, he became one of the era's most sought-after portraitists, painting Louis XIV, Molière, Bossuet, Madame de Maintenon, and other leading figures of the court and intellectual life. He was the great rival of Charles Le Brun, refusing to join the Académie royale while Le Brun led it, and only became its director and premier peintre du Roi after Le Brun's death in 1690. Mignard died in Paris in 1695, having just begun work on the cupola of Les Invalides. His paintings are held today in major museums across Europe and the United States.