Nicolas Mignard

Self-portrait

Nicolas Mignard (1606–1668) was a French painter. He spent most of his active life in Avignon and was the older brother of Pierre Mignard, and the father of Pierre II Mignard.

Biography

The Shepherd Faustulus Bringing Romulus and Remus to His Wife, 1654, Dallas Museum of Art

Nicolas Mignard was born in Troyes in 1606. There, he studied painting with a local master. After traveling to Fontainebleau, Mignard came to Avignon in 1632. He then traveled to Rome with Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon. Mignard came back to Avignon in 1636, after having executed multiple series of etching in Rome. There, he mostly painted for religious institutions. Mignard spent the end of his life in Paris, where he became a successful portrait painter. Mignard left Paris after a visit of King Louis XIV and his Court in Avignon. King Louis XIV decided to bring Mignard to Paris. Mignard eventually joined the Academie Royale.

Mignard’s spending most of his life in Avignon made his career somewhat overshadowed by his younger brother Pierre, who was installed in Paris. After his death, paintings by Nicolas Mignard mostly stayed in Avignon or in small cities around Avignon. During the French Revolution, as these paintings were taken over, most of them were attributed to Pierre Mignard.

His art is now rediscovered. His style is typical of the Italianate classicizing aesthetic that dominated seventeenth-century France, and obviously was very much influenced by French classical Baroque painter Poussin.

Nicolas Mignard died in 1668 in Paris.

Biography

• Nicolas Mignard at Avignon, catalogue of the 1979 Avignon exhibition, by Antoine Schnapper (1979)
• Dallas Museum of Art, A Guide to the Collection, 1997 catalogue, p 82