Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714 - 1789). Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre, born in Paris on March 6, 1714, and died in the same city on May 15, 1789 was a French painter, engraver, designer and director. He was awarded the Prix de Rome, first painter to the Duke of Orleans, first painter to the King, and president of the Academy. Probably a pupil of Nicolas Bertin, he undoubtedly follows the courses of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and paints his self-portrait from 1732. Winner of the Grand Prize for painting of the Academy in 1734, this success earned him to stay at the Académie de France à Rome as a king's boarder from 1735 to 1740 under the direction of Nicolas Vleughels, then Jean-François de Troy. Back in Paris, he was approved at the Academy onApril 29, 1741, then received the March 31, 1742. Throughout the 1740s, the artist shone in all genres of painting, responding to numerous commissions from amateurs, the King's Buildings and the Church. His works presented at the Salons bear witness to this variety: bambochades mingle with great religious or historical compositions and mythological works. Building on the success of his art, he climbed one by one all the levels of the academic hierarchy: he became assistant professor in 1744, was the youngest competitor chosen to participate in the competition organized by Le Normant de Tournehem and Charles Antoine Coypel in 1747, which earned him the election of professor in 1748. In 1752, widely recognized by critics, he was appointed first painter to the Duke of Orleans. He gave numerous drawings for the new apartments of the Palais-Royal where he painted a ceiling representing The Apotheosis of Psyche. In 1754, he decorated the private theater of the Duke of Orleans in the Faubourg Saint-Martin. At the Château de Saint-Cloud, he completed in 1768 a ceiling with five compartments on the theme of Renaud and Armide. Between 1752 and 1757, he also painted two cupolas for the Saint-Roch church : The Triumph of Religion for the Chapel of the Communion, and above all the immense Assumption of the Virgin for the Chapel of the Virgin, its chief 'work and the only testimony of the painted ceilings which made its reputation. In 1761, he was named knight of the order of Saint-Michel and, in 1770, became First painter of the King following François Boucher, responsible for the detail of the Arts and director of the Academy. He also exercises the functions of director of the Gobelins factory. For almost twenty years, under the supervision of the superintendents of the successive King's Buildings, theMarquis de Marigny, then Father Terray and especially Count d'Angiviller, he exerted a decisive influence on the art and artists of his time. He then reserved his talents as a painter for royal commissions which he carried out on a voluntary basis in Choisy, the Petit Trianon and Marly. Collector of his contemporaries, he has a painting by Chardin representing a chicken and a cowbird. Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre died on May 15, 1789, on the eve of the Revolution. Diderot, he should be stressed that the reviews written as part of the Literary Correspondence of Grimm remained handwritten and were brought to the attention of a large audience at the time of their first edition in 1813, does not tire to disparage him. In his Salon of 1763, he writes: For the past twelve years he has always been degenerating, and his arrogance has increased as his talent is lost. Today he is the most vain and the flattest of our artists. But in 1767, his judgment is more measured:“Judging Pierre by the first paintings he made on his return from Italy and by his Galerie de Saint-Cloud, but especially by his dome of Saint-Roch, he is a great painter. He draws well, but dryly; he orders a composition quite well, and there is no lack of color.