Charles-Joseph Natoire
Charles-Joseph Natoire (3 March 1700 – 23 August 1777) was a French painter known for the Rococo style. He was a pupil of François Lemoyne and directed the French Academy in Rome from 1751 to 1775. In his time he was seen as the equal of François Boucher and helped shape French art.
Natoire was born in Nîmes. His father Florent Natoire, a sculptor, taught him drawing before sending him to Paris in 1717 to study with Louis Galloche and then with Lemoyne. He won the Prix de Rome in 1721 and arrived as a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome in 1723. There he copied Pietro da Cortona’s Rape of the Sabine Women and earned prizes, returning to Paris in 1729. He joined the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1730.
He received many royal commissions, including works for Marie Leszczyńska and for Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the Hôtel de Soubise. He is remembered for the History of Psyche for Germain Boffrand’s oval salon at the Hôtel de Soubise, and for the tapestry cartoons of the History of Don Quixote woven at Beauvais (many are now at the Château de Compiègne). He also painted Saint Stephen in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and other works.
As director of the Academy in Rome, he guided pupils such as Hubert Robert and Fragonard and helped promote the envoies sent to Paris. He was made a noble and received the Order of Saint-Michel in 1753, but he did not embrace the rising neoclassical style. One later fresco, the Apotheosis of Saint Louis for San Luigi dei Francesi (1754–56), drew criticism.
In the late 1760s his career faced trouble: a lawsuit over administration led to a fine in 1770. In 1775 he was retired from his post by Angiviller and moved to Castel Gandolfo, where he died in 1777 at the age of 77.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:59 (CET).