This room contains works by famous French painters of the 17th century. The “First Painter to the King” Simon Vouet (1590-1643) painted Allegorical Portrait of Anna of Austria as Minerva in the early 1640s; the portrait depicts the wife of Louis XIII in the form of Minerva, the Roman goddess of war and wisdom. This monumental, representational work serves as a prime example of the idea of the “grand style” which emerged in official art at that time and which Vouet helped to develop. He was known to work across many genres, a fact which is evidenced in his Madonna with Child, the most famous of many versions of this work painted by Vouet. The painting Crucifixion was also clearly painted in his workshop. Among Vouet’s students was Eustache Le Sueur (1616-1665), in whose three works hanging on the wall opposite the windows one can recognize both the artist’s unique lyrical tone as well as as the delicate choices of color which characterize his style. Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple (no earlier than 1641) was one of Le Sueur’s first forays into religious painting: it depicts a scene from the life of the Virgin Mary, in which she is given to service as a three-year-old girl by her mother Anne to the Temple in Jerusalem.
The painting Darius Hystaspis Opens the Tomb of Nitocry (approx. 1649) is based upon a story by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in which the Persian King Darius ordered his men to open grave of the Babylonian Queen Nitocris, which according to an inscription contained untold riches. However, the burial chamber was found to be empty, and an inscription inside of it reproached him for the greed which had driven him to disturb the repose of the dead.
Choosing an Old Testament subject for his monumental painting The Exposition of Moses (no later than 1649), Le Seur portrayed the moment Moses, the future prophet and leader of the Israelites, was saved by his mother, who refused to throw him into the Nile as the Pharaoh ordered of anyone with a Jewish newborn son, and instead left him in a basket on the side of the river. The infant’s sister was instructed to watch from afar to see what happened next.
This great Old Testament figure can also be seen in Moses with the Ten Commandments by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) which depicts him with rays of light emanating from his head and holding his staff and the Ten Commandments in his hands.
Scene from the Life of St Benedict. The Poisoned Cup of Wine, painted in Champaigne’s workshop, is based on the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I: Benedict, the future abbot of the monastery, earned the disapproval of the other monks due to his strictness, and as a result they decided to serve him wine laced with poison; however, when he performed the sign of the cross over the chalice, it shattered.
The painting Mercury Takes Bacchus to be Brought up by Nymphs is the work of Laurent de La Hyre (1606-1656). It was inspired by Greco-Roman mythology, and belongs to a period in which his work was heavily influenced by Venetian art. Here the infant Bacchus’s mother, Semele, lies dying by the river with a nymph leaning over her, while Bacchus lies on Ino’s lap, forming an intersection of two diagonals. The grape vine that winds itself around the column, as well as the ivy at the feet of Zeus’s son, the future god of wine, both serve as symbols for Bacchus.
