Sébastien Bourdon

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Sébastien Bourdon (1616–1671) was a French painter and engraver. His best‑known work is The Crucifixion of St. Peter for Notre Dame Cathedral. He was born in Montpellier to a Protestant glass painter and learned painting in Paris. Despite poverty, he traveled to Rome in 1636 to study, drawing on the styles of Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and Caravaggio. Because of his Protestant faith, he had to flee Rome in 1638 and then spent many years in Paris.

In 1648 Bourdon helped found the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and was one of its first twelve elders. In 1652 he moved to Sweden, where Queen Christina made him her first court painter. Bourdon was versatile: he painted portraits in various styles, landscapes, ruins, mythological scenes, and genre pictures. Because he borrowed from many influences, he does not have a single, easily recognizable “Bourdon style.” Some late work showed neoclassical tendencies.

He spent most of his career outside France and was long seen as a pasticheur, a view that softened after a major 2000 exhibition at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. He ran a large workshop and taught artists including Nicolas-Pierre Loir and Pierre Mosnier. Bourdon died in Paris in 1671.