Pierre Subleyras
(1699-1749)

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Pierre Subleyras was a French painter born at Uses (Gard). He left France for Italy in 1728, having carried off the grand prix. He there painted for the Canons of Asti "Christ's Visit to the House of Simon the Pharisee" (Louvre, engraved by Subleyras himself), a large work, which made his reputation and procured his admission into the famed Roman artists guild, Accademia di San Luca.

Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga next obtained for him the order for "Saint Basil and the Emperor Valens" (small study in Louvre), which was executed in mosaic for St Peter's. Pope Benedict XIV and all the princes of Rome sat to him. The pope himself commanded two great paintings, the "Marriage of St Catherine" and the "Ecstasy of St Camilla", which he placed in his own private apartments.

Subleyras shows greater individuality in his curious genre pictures, which he produced in considerable number (Louvre). In his illustrations of Fontaine and Boccaccio his true relation to the modern era comes out; and his drawings from nature are often admirable (see one of a man draped in a heavy cloak in the British Museum). Exhausted by overwork, Subleyras tried a change to Naples, but returned to Rome at the end of a few months to die. His wife, the celebrated miniature painter, Maria Felice Tibaldi, was sister to the wife of Tremollière.

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