Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel grew up inside the French art establishment and rose to its very top. Born in Paris in 1661, he was the son of the painter Noël Coypel, and as a boy he spent four years in Rome while his father ran the French academy there, soaking up the grand Italian Baroque he would carry home.

He became a learned painter, a 'peintre lettré' who had classical texts translated so he could find fresh subjects in them. His patrons included the House of Orléans, and between 1701 and 1706 he covered the vault of their Aeneas Gallery in the Palais-Royal in Paris with scenes from Virgil's epic. That ceiling, one of his most admired works, was later destroyed and survives only in drawings and prints. In 1708 he finished painting the ceiling of the royal chapel at Versailles.

The honours followed: keeper of the king's drawings, director of the painting academy, and in 1715 Premier peintre du Roi, first painter to the king. He was ennobled in 1717 and died in Paris in 1722, having published his own lectures on painting the year before.