Simon Vouet

French, 1590 - 1649

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French painter (1590-1649)

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Two pale-skinned women wearing jewel-toned blue, pink, and yellow togas sit on the ground at the foot of a stone building, with three, winged, child-like putti flying nearby in this horizontal painting. The women take up most of the left half of the painting while the building behind them spans nearly three-quarters of the composition. A sliver of landscape is visible beyond the building to our right. Both women have dark, ash-brown hair wrapped back around diadems, long, straight noses, dark eyes, and smooth skin. Their cheeks are flushed, and their dark pink lips are parted. To our left, the first woman sits with her body facing our right in profile, and she turns to look at us from the corners of her eyes. Six silver stars line the sky-blue diadem in her hair. Her voluminous white shift falls off the shoulder closer to us, and she wears a swath of sapphire-blue drapery over her other arm and lap. One foot, wearing a yellow sandal, emerges from under the hem of her robe. She leans the elbow closer to us on a silver sphere, which comes a bit higher than her waist. Her other hand rests on the shoulder of the woman next to her. The second woman sits with her legs angled to our right, and she turns her face back to look at the first woman. She wears a butter-yellow garment under a rose-pink toga, and one foot, wearing a blue sandal, rests on the dirt ground. A baby-blue ribbon is tied through her hair, around a gold coronet. Her hands rest on a book in her lap. The partial word “odiss” is written along the edges of the pages facing us. Three pudgy angels with small blue wings flutter near the second woman, to our right. The putti have short, brown or blond, curly hair. Sashes in golden yellow, pink, or blue are tied around one shoulder and their opposite hips. They hold up three crowns of leaves. The building immediately behind the women and putti is parchment white streaked with brown. A tall foundation supports two columns, the base of which are near the top edge of the painting. A few plants grow out of the crevices, and a bush with white and light blue flowers grows behind the woman in blue, to our left. A landscape extends into the distance to our right, with rolling green hills, trees, and far-off, ice-blue mountains along the horizon. The sky above has apricot-peach and gray clouds against a pale blue sky.
Simon Vouet, The Muses Urania and Calliope, c. 1634, oil on wood, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.61

The Muses Urania and Calliope

Simon Vouet · c. 1634 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1961.9.61

Simon Vouet, Holy Family with a Bird, 1633, etching on laid paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 2021.54.1

Holy Family with a Bird

Simon Vouet · 1633 · etching on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2021.54.1

Shown from the knees up, a young woman sits nuzzling a baby in her lap in this vertical painting. They both have pale skin tinged with pink. The woman’s body is angled to our right with her head in profile. A narrow, white scarf ties around her dark brown hair, leaving soft tendrils brushing the side of her face and neck. Her eyes are lowered, and her pursed, rose-pink lips almost touch the infant’s upturned face. A sea-blue mantle is draped across her back and one shoulder, and wraps around to lie across her lap. Ivory-white fabric drapes across her neckline over a voluminous, coral-red robe. The nude, plump child faces away from us, perched on the woman’s knee. He turns to reach fir the woman, so we see a sliver of his flushed, left cheek and the tip of his nose. He has curly blond hair. One pudgy hand rests on her neck while the other cradles her chin. A mustard-yellow cloth wraps around his hips and under his dimpled bottom. The woman’s left hand, on our right, delicately embraces his hip. She leans onto her other arm, propped on a stone ledge to our left, and that hand loosely holds one end of the baby’s yellow drapery. The scene is lit from the upper left, and they are set against a background that transitions from earth brown on the left to cinnamon brown on the right. The artist signed the work as if he had written his name and the date on the face of the ledge, just under the woman’s elbow: “Simon Vovet Pinxit.1633.”
Simon Vouet, Madonna and Child, 1633, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund, 2016.20.1

Madonna and Child

Simon Vouet · 1633 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2016.20.1

Simon Vouet, Creusa Carrying the Gods of Troy, c. 1635, black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue laid paper, with later framing line in brown ink, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1971.17.3

Creusa Carrying the Gods of Troy

Simon Vouet · c. 1635 · black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue laid paper, with later framing line in brown ink ·  Accession ID  1971.17.3

Shown from the waist up, an elderly, balding, light-skinned man with a bushy white beard sits behind a table, facing us, in front of a winged angel who looks on in this shadowy, horizontal painting. The man sits with his body angled slightly to our right, and he turns his head to look in the opposite direction. His eyes are sunk in shadow under deeply furrowed brows, set in his lined face. His sparse, gray and white hair is tousled. He wears only a scarlet-red cloth draped across his lap and over his sinewy left arm, on our right. His open left hand is raised, palm up, at shoulder height. In his other hand, he holds a pen, hovering over a partially unwound scroll. His forearm rests on an open book beneath the scroll. He looks over his right shoulder at the curly-haired angel with snow-white wings. The angel wears a flowing, light blue robe with a golden yellow cloth draped around the chest and over the shoulders. Softly smiling, the backlit angel leans toward the man, face deep in shadow. With arms lifted, one hand gestures with a slightly crooked finger, pointing beyond the picture’s border to our left. In the other hand, the angel holds a golden horn in the dusky background behind the man’s left shoulder. Behind the man and angel and to our right, a single candle sits on two books lying in an arched wall niche. On the desk closest to us are a crumpled cloth on a book, a shiny rust-brown ball, a pair of eyeglasses, an inkpot, an hourglass, and a second book, to our right. Light coming from our upper left starkly illuminates the two people against the shadowed, earth-brown background.
Simon Vouet, Saint Jerome and the Angel, c. 1622/1625, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.52

Saint Jerome and the Angel

Simon Vouet · c. 1622/1625 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.52

Simon Vouet, A Bearded Man with a Staff, black chalk and graphite, heightened with white on tan laid paper, Gift of William B. O'Neal, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.150.88

A Bearded Man with a Staff

Simon Vouet · · black chalk and graphite, heightened with white on tan laid paper ·  Accession ID  1991.150.88

Bibliography

1666

  • Félibien, André. Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes. 6 vols. 1st ed. Paris, 1666-1688 (Reprint Trévoux, 1725): 3:392-399.

1962

  • Crelly, William R. The Painting of Simon Vouet, New Haven and London, 1962.

1987

  • Brejon de Lavergnée, Barbara. Dessins de Simon Vouet, 1590–1649. Paris, 1987.

1990

  • Thuillier, Jacques et al. Vouet. Exh. cat. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1990.

1996

  • Brejon de Lavergnée, Barbara. “Vouet.” In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 32:715–719.

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: 454-455.