Pierre Subleyras

Signing at Librairie Lardanchet on Thursday 23 November 2023 from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m.

An admirable portraitist, who composed like no other to express religious feeling, a subtle draughtsman and a refined colourist, Pierre Subleyras was the greatest painter of Rome in the 18th century.

A native of Languedoc, trained in Uzès, Toulouse and then Paris, a boarder at the Académie de France in the Palazzo Mancini, he won prestigious commissions from the most important figures of his time. From The Meal at Simon's, exhibited in 1737, to the portrait of Pope Benedict XIV in 1740 and The Mass of Saint Basil painted for Saint Peter's in 1747, he imposed his style on a city that lacked neither models nor rivals. His calm, solemn art is served by ochre reds, slate blues and amber yellows, by deep whites and luminous blacks that are uniquely his own.

This book is the first monograph devoted to Subleyras. It retraces the artist's life and work and draws up a catalogue of his autographed, mentioned, uncertain and rejected works.