Sébastien Bourdon

Sébastien Bourdon (1616–1671) was born in Montpellier, the son of a Protestant glass painter, and was apprenticed to a painter in Paris. Despite his poverty he reached Rome in 1636 and studied Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Caravaggio there, until fear of prosecution for his Reformed faith drove him back to France. In 1648 he was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and in 1652 Queen Christina of Sweden made him her first court painter. He moved easily between manners: portraits in a Rubens manner or in plain, intimate half-length formats, landscapes in the style of Gaspard Dughet, history painting close to Poussin's circle and genre scenes like those of the Bamboccianti. That range long had him dismissed as an imitator, a view partly corrected by a 2000 exhibition at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. His principal work, the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, was painted for Notre-Dame. He died in Paris. Here: Presentation of Child Jesus in the Temple to Simeon.