Jean-Nicolas Servandoni et la peinture d’architecture au xviiie siècle

This paper examines Jean-Nicolas Servandoni’s relatively unknown activity as an easel painter. Although apparently discreet, the execution of paintings of ruins occupied the artist throughout his career. It earned him public and critical recognition, eliciting high praise. It finally allowed him to enter the prestigious Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1731. Servandoni’s paintings were not only important in his career but also in the evolution of taste in the 18th century. Trained in Rome by Giovanni Paolo Panini, Servandoni introduced a new power and energy to his depictions of ruined architecture and monuments, which his pupils and followers, Demachy in particular, remembered. His contemporaries were sensitive to his sense of monumentality, which was not unrelated to his other, better-known activities as an architect and opera set designer. His paintings were purchased by the greatest Parisian collectors: the Cardinal d’Auvergne, the Comte de Choiseul, La Live de Jully and Blondel de Gagny