Philippe de Champaigne. Philippe de Champaigne was a Brabançon-born French Baroque era painter, a major exponent of the French school.
He was a founding member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, the premier art institution in France in the eighteenth century. Born of a poor family in Brussels, during the reign of the Archduke Albert and Isabella, Champaigne was a pupil of the landscape painter Jacques Fouquières.
In 1621 he moved to Paris, where he worked with Nicolas Poussin on the decoration of the Palais du Luxembourg under the direction of Nicolas Duchesne, whose daughter he married. According to Houbraken, Duchesne was angry at Champaigne for becoming more popular than he was at court, and this is why Champaigne returned to Brussels to live with his brother.
It was only after he received news of Duchesne's death that he returned to marry his daughter. After the death of his protector Duchesne, Champaigne worked for the Queen Mother, Marie de Medicis, for whom he participated in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace.
He made several paintings for the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, dating from 1638. He also drew several cartoons for tapestries. He was made first painter of the Queen with a pension of 1200 pounds. He also decorated the Carmelite Church of Faubourg Saint-Jacques, one of the favorite churches of the Queen Mother. This site was destroyed during the French Revolutio