Baroque and Rococo

 

Baroque and Rococo Art Map

 

Eustache Le Sueur




 

Eustache Le Sueur

(b Paris, 19 Nov 1616; d Paris, 30 April 1655).

French painter and draughtsman. He was one of the most important painters of historical, mythological and religious pictures in 17th-century France and one of the founders of French classicism. He was long considered the ‘French Raphael’ and the equal of Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun. His reputation reached its zenith in the first half of the 19th century, but since then it has been in decline, largely as a result of the simplified and saccharine image of the man and his art created by Romantic writers and painters. Nevertheless, more recent recognition of the complexity of his art has resulted in a new interest in him and in his place in the evolution of French painting in the 17th century. Despite the almost total absence of signed and dated works, the chronology of Le Sueur’s oeuvre can be established with the aid of a few surviving contracts, dated engravings after his paintings and the list of works published by Le Comte in 1700.

 

Caligula Depositing the Ashes of his Mother and Brother
in the Tomb of his Ancestors
1647
Oil on canvas, 167 x 143 cm
Royal Collection, Windsor


 

The Muse Terpsichore
1652-55
Oil on panel, 116 x 74 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
 

Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple


 

Jesus llevando la Cruz


 

Christ Healing the Blind Man