Jacques Courtouis

JACQUES COURTOUIS "LE BORGUIGNON" (Saint-Hippolyte - Rome1675).
"Battle".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It presents restorations in the pictorial surface.
Measurements: 55 x 165 cm; 67 x 177 cm (frame).
In this landscape landscape the author presents us a war scene that is defined by a chaotic multitude in the center, where numerous soldiers fight among themselves. The multiplicity of diagonals of the central composition, the diversity of characters and their gestures, gives the scene a sense of dynamism that is offset by the stillness of the landscape that frames the sides. As is usual in the representation of this type of theme, it is an apparently chaotic scene, although rigorously studied, that reflects with naturalism the din of the fight, the violence of the confrontation, a violence that is also reflected in the warm and fiery chromatism itself. While in the seventeenth century the demand for religious art for churches ceased radically.
Jacques Courtois, also known as Giacomo Cortese or il Borgognone, was an outstanding Baroque painter and engraver of battle scenes. He received his first painting lessons from his father, Jean Courtois, and moved as a young man to Milan with part of his family. There he served as a painter in a Comtois regiment in the service of Spain during the Ten Years' War (1636-1639), an experience that would decisively mark his artistic production centered on war themes.
He later broadened his training in Bologna, where he came into contact with Guido Reni and Francesco Albani, and in Florence he met Jan Asselyn, a specialist in battle scenes, whose influence was notable. He also traveled to Venice and Fribourg before settling in Rome in 1640, where he achieved recognition with his work The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (1641).
In 1657 he joined the Society of Jesus as a coadjutor brother and produced important mural paintings, including a series of six battles attributed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, in collaboration with his brother Guillaume. He also participated in the decoration of the apartments of St. Ignatius in the Casa Profesa del Gesù.
His last years were devoted to large-scale projects, although his weakened health prevented him from completing some, such as the sketches for the decoration of the apse of the church of the Gesù in 1672. His self-portrait, commissioned by Cosimo III de Medici in 1675, is preserved in the Vasari Corridor of the Uffizi Gallery. Courtois died in Rome in 1676, leaving a fundamental legacy in Baroque battle painting, characterized by its compositional dynamism and the dramatic tension of his scenes.