Pierre Mignard was, with Charles Le Brun (1619-90), one of the most successful painters of the reign of Louis XIV. He worked for the King and many of the principal figures at court both as a portraitist and as a painter of large-scale decorative schemes.
After training in Troyes, where he was born, and in Bourges, Mignard joined the studio of Simon Vouet in Paris in 1627. He went to Italy in 1636 and remained there until 1657. He studied the work of Correggio and Pietro da Cortona in Rome as well as copying Annibale Carracci's frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese.
Mignard's best known surviving decorative scheme is the dome of the church of the Val-de-Grâce in Paris, commissioned by Louis XIV's queen, Anne of Austria. Because of his rivalry with Le Brun, Mignard was unwilling to become a member of the Academy, but on Le Brun's death in 1690 he succeeded him as its Director and as First Painter to the King.
Pierre Mignard
1612 - 1695
Paintings by Pierre Mignard
In this portrait, the recently widowed Catherine-Thérèse, Marquise de Seignelay (1662–1699) and two of her five sons are shown as characters from Greek and Roman mythology. The Marquise is probably meant to be the sea goddess Thetis, but could also be interpreted as Venus, the goddess of love, wi...