Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel (1661–1722) was born in Paris, the son of the painter Noël Coypel, who trained him. He spent four years in Rome with his father, then director of the French Academy there, studying antiquities and the painting of Raphael, the Carracci, Titian, Veronese and Correggio, and Bernini became his mentor. He completed his training at the Académie Royale in Paris and was admitted a full member at twenty. He worked on the royal projects at Versailles, Trianon, Marly and Meudon, and from 1685 was first painter to Philippe, Duke of Orléans, for whose family he painted the vault of the Aeneas Gallery in the Palais-Royal, now lost. He decorated the ceiling of the royal chapel at Versailles in 1708, became director of the Académie in 1714 and king's painter in 1716, and was ennobled the following year. With Jouvenet, La Fosse and Louis de Boullogne he marks the shift from the austere manner of Louis XIV's reign to the lighter style of the eighteenth century. Here: Baptism of Christ.