Bertholet Flemalle d.ä.

Variant namesauktoriserad namnform: Bertholet Flemalle d.ä.

DatesBiographical dates: 1614 - 1675 Dead: dead 1675 Born: born 1614

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BiographyBiography: Painter of religious, historical, mythological and allegorical subjects and portraits. Born into a family of artists, Bertholet Flémalle was probably first apprenticed to his father, Renier Flémalle, a stained glass painter. He was later a pupil of the painter Henri Trippet, before completing his training during the 1630s with Gérard Douffet, the leading painter at Liège in the first half of the 17th century, who had returned from Italy around 1624. According to his early biographer, Louis Abry (1715), Bertholet travelled to Rome around 1638, and on the return journey he visited Florence and stayed for some time in Paris. In 1646 he returned to his native city. Flémalle had a flourishing career as a painter at Liège, where he worked for private collectors, but also received numerous commissions from the many religious establishments of the city. An important patron was Canon Lambert de Liverloo, Chancellor to the Prince-Bishop of Liège. Flémalle also made designs for religious buildings and fittings, but none of his architectural work has survived. In 1670, at the height of his career, he was painter to the Prince-Bishop, Maximilian-Henry of Bavaria, and for Louis XIV of France he painted an allegory, Religion Protecting France (1670, destr. 1871), for the ceiling of the audience chamber at the Tuileries, Paris. In the same year, he was appointed Professor at the Académie Royale in Paris. The Prince-Bishop made him a canonical prebendary of the collegiate church of St.Paul at Liège. Following his return to Liège in 1646, after nearly ten years spent in Italy and France, Flémalle was instrumental in introducing a taste for Franco-Roman classicism, especially the art of Nicolas Poussin and his followers, to an artistic milieu still dominated by Rubens’ towering genius. As there are no signed or dated paintings by Flémalle, a chronology of his works is difficult to establish. He had a great impact on the painters of Liège, influencing the work of such artists as Renier de Lairesse and his son, Gérard de Lairesse, as well as his pupils, Jean-Gilles Delcour, Englebert Fisen and Jean Guillaume Carlier. Several of Bertholet’s paintings were reproduced in engravings by his friend, Michel Natalis.

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