Simon Vouet was born on January 9, 1590 in Paris, France; the son of a minor court painter and grandson of the Master of the King's Falcons, Vouet was a child prodigy who was perfectly situated to receive the best possible exposure to great works of art, and the best training, which probably began with his father.
In 1611 Simon Vouet accompanied the French ambassador, Sancy, to Constantinople and painted the sultan of Turkey.
Returning from the East, he stayed for about 15 years in Italy, working for the Barberini and the Doria families in Rome and Genoa and studying the Italian painters, who exerted a pronounced influence upon his mature style.
He passed, many years in Italy, where he married, and established himself at Rome, enjoying there a high reputation as a portrait painter.
There, like so many artists of his generation, he painted in a Carravaggesque mode, but one that sought to infuse this tenebrist approach with delicacy and refinement (St. Jerome and the Angel, c. 1622, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. ).
His commissions at this time included altarpieces or complete decorations for the Raggi Chapel of the Gesúin Genoa, the Alaleoni Chapel in St. Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome, and the Charter House of St. Martin in Naples.
In 1627 Louis XIII summoned him to return to France, and Vouet spent the rest of his life in Paris.
During his four-month stop in Venice on his return journey from Rome, he modified his heavy chiaroscuro with the grace, fluidity, and color of northern Italian painting.
As a result, Vouet became unequaled in Paris for grand decorative painting, where slightly elongated monumental figures with swirling draperies slowly float across the surfaces of his large canvases (Allegory of Wealth, Louvre, Paris).
His manner was an astute blend of sixteenth-century mannerist French court art at Fontainebleau, the Romano-Bolognese classicism of the Carracci, the naturalism of Carravaggio, and the extravagant color, lively facture, and dazzling light of sixteenth-century Venetian artists.
The genius of Vouet's elegant inventions was conveyed by the power of his draftsmanship, as is evident in the numerous drawings that survive.
Only a small number of composition studies enable us to comprehend the genesis of his designs.
Vouet's ever-increasing success led to numerous ecclesiastic commissions for altarpieces (St. Nicolas-des-Champs, St. Eustache, and the Novitiate of the Jesuits), and an even greater number of royal and private commissions for both religious and secular decorations at the Louvre, the Palais Royal, the Palais du Luxembourg, the Hôtel Séguier and the chateaux at Chilly, Chessy, Fontainebleau, Poitou, Rueil, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and Wideville.
Being in such demand required an increasing number of skilled hands in a remarkably organized studio.
His extraordinarily busy atelier utilized, trained, and influenced more than a generation of painters and printmakers.
These artists included François Perrier, Nicolas Chaperon, Charles Poërson, Pierre Daret, Michel I Corneille, Nöel Quillerier, François Bellin, Pierre Patel l'aîné, Eustache Le Sueur, Michel Dorigny (1616–1665), and François Tortebat (1616–1690).
These last two became his sons-in-law and made etching or prints of many of his works.
As each of these artists matured, they actively participated in the master's vast decorative campaigns.
This encouraged an atmosphere of experimentation with printmaking that led Perrier, Dorigny, Tortebat, and others to interpretin etchings and engravings a large portion of his most celebrated commissions. See also Caravaggio and Caravaggism; Carracci Family; Le Brun, Charles; Louis XIII (France); Mannerism; Painting; Richelieu, Armand-Jean Du Plessis, cardinal.
Almost everything he did was engraved by his sons-in-law Tortebat and Dorigny.
Simon Vouet was a natural academic, who absorbed what he saw and studied, and distilled it in his painting: Caravaggio's dramatic lighting; Italian Mannerism; Paolo Veronese's color and di sotto in su or foreshortened perspective; and the art of Carracci, Guercino, Lanfranco and Guido Reni.
