Introduction
Jean Barbault (1718–1762) was a French painter and printmaker, working in Rome.
Life
Barbault spent his whole career in Italy, where he lived from around 1747. He was admitted to the French Academy in Rome in Rome in 1750, despite not being a winner of the Grand Prix. Many of his works are small paintings depicting individual figures, either Italian women, or his fellow artists dressed in fantastical "Oriental" costumes. One much larger oil on paper – almost four metres wide – depicts a group of artists taking part in a carnival procession on the theme of "The Four Corners of the World". It is now in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie at Besançon. He also painted scenes of ruins in a style similar that of Servandoni.
As a painter, Barbault has never been well known, but he etched a set of prints of Les plus beaux Monuments de Rome ancienne, and two other series of archaeological plates. He also made a few engravings, including The Martyrdom of St. Peter, after Subleyras, and The Arrival of Columbus in America, after Solimena. He died in Rome in 1762, at the age of 43.
An exhibition of his work was held in Beauvais, touring to Angers, Valence and Dijon, in 1974–5; another, which included about half of his known paintings, was staged at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg in 2010.