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(1) Michel Corneille (i) [le père]
(b Orléans, ?1601–3; d Paris, 13 Jan 1664). Painter. He studied in the studio of Simon Vouet in Paris and became friends with Eustache Le Sueur, François Perrier and other leading artists in the capital; with his marriage in 1636 he became son-in-law to the sculptor Jacques Sarazin. Michel’s first signed painting, however, Esau Yielding his Birthright to Jacob (1630; Orléans, Mus. B.-A.), shows no signs of Vouet’s influence. On the contrary, the realism of what is in effect a genre scene with an entirely imaginative basis relates it to the Flemish followers of Caravaggio, for example Pieter Lastman or the Pynas family, although as a whole the work recalls that of the Le Nain brothers. By turns attributed to Jacques Blanchard, Joachim Wtewael and an anonymous Flemish artist, this odd and disconcerting work is an unusual example of an artist in search of a personal style. The other paintings attributed to Michel show, however, unmistakable signs of Vouet’s influence. This can be seen in the two Mays (the altarpieces commissioned annually by the goldsmiths’ corporation of Paris) he painted for Notre-Dame, Paris: SS Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (1644; Arras, Mus. B.-A.) and St Peter Baptizing the Centurion (1658; Toulouse, St Pierre). Together with a Visitation (Blois, Mus. Mun.), all these works are well-balanced compositions in which architecture plays a large part, with full forms and light tonality—features that testify to Michel’s admiration for Raphael. Attribution of his other pictures is often contested: the father’s work is frequently confused with that of his sons, (2) Michel Corneille (ii) and (3) Jean-Baptiste Corneille.
Part of the Corneille family
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