Valentin de Boulogne

Valentin de Boulogne (also called Le Valentin and Moïse Valentin) (bapt. Coulommiers, ?3 Jan. 1591; d Rome, 18/19 Aug. 1632).
French Caravaggesque painter, active in Rome for all his known career (he is first securely documented there in 1620 but probably arrived appreciably earlier). His life is fairly obscure and his first name is unknown; the word ‘Moïse’ (the French form of Moses), which was sometimes used to refer to him, is not a personal name but a corruption of the Italian form of ‘monsieur’. He did, however, paint one major public work—the Martyrdom of St Processus and St Martinian (1629–30, Pinacoteca, Vatican), commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Barberini for St Peter's as a pendant to Poussin's Martyrdom of St Erasmus. About 80 pictures are attributed to Valentin. They vary in subject—religious, mythological, and genre scenes and portraits—but the same models often seem to reappear in them. Characteristically his work is marked by an impressively solemn, at times melancholic, dignity, but he could also create a vivid sense of menace in his portrayals of sinister drinking dives and gambling dens (The Card-Sharps, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden). He was one of the best of Caravaggio's followers and one of the most dedicated, still painting in his style when it had gone out of fashion in Rome. Baglione says that he died after taking a cold bath in a fountain following a drinking bout; his death was much lamented in the city's artistic community.