Madeleine Boullogne was a French Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 still life painter.

Family

She was the daughter of Louis Boullogne

Louis Boullogne

Louis Boullogne , known as Louis le père, was a French painter.-Life:After spending some years in Italy, Boullogne set up in Paris and made a major contribution to the organisation of the Académie de peinture, where he was a professor until his death.He was talented as a copyist and many anecdotes...

 (painter and one of the founders of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture) and the sister of the painters Bon

Bon Boullogne

Bon Boullogne was a French painter.-Biography:Boullogne was born in Paris, a son of the painter Louis Boullogne; he was regarded as the most gifted of his children. He took his first lessons from his father, whom he is thought to have assisted in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre...

, Louis

Louis de Boullogne

Louis de Boullogne II , known as Boullogne fils, was a French painter.-Life:The brother of Bon Boullogne, their father Louis Boullogne feared rivalry between the two brothers if Louis the younger also became a painter and so at first opposed his wish to become a painter...

 and Geneviève Boullogne.

Life

On 7 November 1669 she was received into the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. She began working in the royal workshops, notably at the Palais des Tuileries, where she painted four canvases for the antichamber to the Grand appartement du roi, but also at the Versailles, where she painted for the antichamber of the Grand appartement de la reine.

Madeleine Boullogne lived an austere and pious life, teaching many students, remaining unmarried and living with her brother Bon. Marked by a strict Augustinism bordering on Jansenism

Jansenism

Jansenism was a Christian theological movement, primarily in France, that emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. The movement originated from the posthumously published work of the Dutch theologian Cornelius Otto Jansen, who died in 1638...

, she lived a semi-monastic life. Her presence in the Nécrologe de Port-Royal well shows this lifestyle :
She painted many works on life at Port-Royal-des-Champs, that Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels

Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels

Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels, or Louise-Madeleine Hortemels, also called Magdeleine Horthemels , was a French engraver, the mother of Charles-Nicolas Cochin...

 then engraved and which were extremely popular. She also painted still lifes and many portraits, as well as many religious paintings.

Madeleigne Boullogne was forgotten little by little over the 18th century, with some of her paintings even being attributed to others. She is best known for her paintings on Port-Royal, especially since many of her paintings at the Tuileries have disappeared and most of her work at Versailles was destroyed in the construction of the Galerie des Glaces.

Works

• Salon of 1673 : six paintings of trophies and one still life of fruits
• Salon of 1704 : one still life of fruits, one still life of musical instruments
• Versailles, château, above the door to the antechamber of the Grand Couvert, 1673.

Sources

• Caix de Saint-Aymour, Une famille d’artistes et de financiers : les Boullongne, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1919.
• Notice sur le site de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime (SIEFAR) online text
• Dictionnaire de Port-Royal, sous la direction de Jean Lesaulnier et Anthony McKenna, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2004.
• Michel Faré, Le Grand Siècle de la nature morte, le XVIIe siècle, Paris, Fribourg, 1974, p.245-9.

External links

• Madeleine de Boullongne dans la base joconde