Aubin Vouet


Aubin Vouet was a French painter, the son of Laurent Vouet and younger brother of Simon Vouet, both also painters.

Life

He joined his brother in Rome six years after Simon had moved there. They were there together around 1619-1620, since in those years they were received into the Stati delle Anime. They both lodged on Vicolo di San Silvestro. In Rome Aubin was strongly influenced by Caravaggio, as can be seen in his early works such as David Holding Goliath's Head, making him one of the Caravaggisti, a group which also included Guido Reni, Nicolas Régnier and Domenico Fetti. However, he quickly returned to France, whereas his brother stayed there a further six years until 1627. In 1621 Aubin was made painter in ordinary to Louis XIII.
Around 1630 he painted two huge canvases for the nave of the chapelle des Pénitents noirs in Toulouse, The Brazen Serpent and The Discovery of the True Cross, though they were both completed by his student Jean Senelle, who had formerly also been a student of Georges Lallemant. In 1634, Aubin Vouet worked on the chapel in the Château-Vieux at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. At around the same time he was also active in his brother Simon's Parisian school and helped complete some of Simon's paintings. Aubin's later style and compositions were similar to Simon's, painting draped figures in bright colours to break up a scene, often as a curve within a triangle and with figures raised above each other, such as the observer in The Centurion Cornelius Kneeling Before Saint Peter, painted as a May for Notre-Dame de Paris and now in the chapelle Saint-Pierre.

Works