page_title: Philippe de Champaigne
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Philippe de Champaigne / Life and work / Career
context_page_description: Philippe de Champaigne was a Brabançon-born French Baroque era painter, a major exponent of the French school. He was a founding member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, the premier art institution in France in the eighteenth century.
context_section_description: Champaigne produced a very large number of paintings, mainly religious works and portraits. Influenced by Rubens at the beginning of his career, his style later became more austere. Philippe de Champaigne remains an exceptional painter thanks to the brilliance of the colors in his paintings and the stern strength of his compositions.
  He portrayed the entire French court, the French high nobility, royalty, high members of the church and the state, parliamentarians and architects, and other notable people. His portrait of the poet Vincent Voiture was created around 1649 as the frontispiece for Voiture's published Works (published posthumously in 1650). The portrait is highly unusual in that Champaigne later reworked it as a portrait of a religious figure, Saint Louis (King Louis IX), to enable Voiture's daughter to keep it with her when she entered a convent.
  In depicting their faces, he refused to show a transitory expression, instead capturing the psychological essence of the person.
  His works can be seen in public buildings, private collections, churches such as Val-de-Grâce, Sorbonne, Saint Severin, Saint-Merri, Saint-Médard and in the Basilica of Notre-Dame du Port in Clermont-Ferrand.
  Champaigne was prominent enough in his time as to be mentioned in Cyrano de Bergerac in a line by Ragueneau referencing Cyrano: "Truly, I should not look to find his portrait By the grave hand of Philippe de Champagne."
  His pupils were his nephew Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, William Faithorne, Jean Morin, and Nicolas de Plattemontagne. During his last period Champaigne painted mainly religious subjects and family members. He died in Paris in 1674.
caption: French poet Vincent Voiture depicted as Saint Louis
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