Nicolas Régnier (c. 1588-1667), The Free Man

The painter's first international retrospective

Featuring some forty paintings from leading international public and private collections, the exhibition retraces the two major periods of this "free man's" Roman and Venetian career, as well as the many aspects of his extraordinary personality.

A cosmopolitan and audacious artist, this Franco-Flemish by birth led a career solidly built on the foundations of a diversified and complementary activity: art dealer and expert, but above all a painter whose works made his reputation. His original and varied output included portraits of the greatest courts, the most important religious commissions, as well as some turbulent scenes of taverns and farces.

Rome / Turbulence and lightness: from Caravaggesque exaltation to sensuality

Arriving in Rome a few years after the death of Caravaggio (1571-1610), Régnier immersed himself in the master's work and played a full part in the spread of this lightning "Caravaggism".

From Caravaggio, the artist retained above all the alliance of the profane and the sacred, mixing religious episodes with tavern scenes from his daily life and the Roman underworld.

Supported by the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani, a former patron and collector of Caravaggio, Régnier was a great success. Particularly inventive, he renewed the very genre of Caravaggio, bringing to it an entirely new sensuality and sophistication.

La Bent

In Rome, from 1620, Régnier lived in the foreign artists' quarter, where French and Flemish artists rubbed shoulders. He found himself working alongside Simon Vouet, Claude Vignon, Nicolas Tournier and Valentin de Boulogne. He soon joined the Bent, an artists' association where mutual aid and emulation were the order of the day, nicknamed the Bentvueghels or "birds of the flock". After an initiation ritual under the aegis of Bacchus, god of wine, he earned the nickname "The Free Man".

Venice / The age of reason and renewal: preciousness, celebrity and bargaining

When the painter arrived in Venice in 1626, the city was cruelly suffering from a lack of renewal, which would be remedied by the arrival of foreign painters such as Nicolas Régnier, who would renew Venetian art in the ^17th century.

In his Lagoon debut, Régnier took up several of the subjects he had developed in Rome. However, he moved away from the sensual realism and chiaroscuro of Caravaggio's art towards more opulent, sensual canons, voluptuously vibrating light and precious materials.

The official production of ceremonial portraits and large church altarpieces established the artist's reputation throughout Europe. At the same time, he developed an easel painting with a singular alchemy of pathos, sensuality and preciousness.

Régnier also frequented the Accademia degli Incogniti, the most influential Venetian literary circle of the ^17th century. The Incogniti [the unknowns] delighted in tragic themes combining drama and eroticism, erudition and praise of the senses, the macabre and the obscene. Régnier's painting echoes the debates raging in the academy he attended at the time.

Prolific, Régnier's workshop was successful right up until his death in 1667.

The Musée d'arts de Nantes presents the chronology of the world's first retrospective exhibition dedicated to the painter Nicolas Régnier! From the highlights of the artist's life in the ^17th century to the rediscovery of his work in the ^20th century, you'll learn all about the "free man"!

Exhibition presentation

Scientific curators Adeline Collange-Perugi (curator of ancient art, Musée d'arts de Nantes) and Annick Lemoine (scientific director of the Festival de l'histoire de l'art, Institut national d'histoire de l'art; lecturer at Rennes 2 University) present the world's first retrospective dedicated to the Caravaggesque painter Nicolas Régnier (c. 1588-1667).

Walking close to the work

The Musée d'arts de Nantes invites you to take a closer look at the work of Nicolas Régnier.

Walk 1: Chiaroscuro

Walk n°2: Colours and materials at Nicolas Régnier

Promenade n°3: Sensuality

Focus: Le Camouflet by Annick Lemoine

Do you love painting and music? On the occasion of the exhibition Nicolas Régnier, L'homme librethe museum team invites you to plunge into the heart of a surprising artistic and musical encounter to discover the exhibition in a different way!

With the energy and complicity of Nantes-based musician Nicolas Courret, we've concocted a playlist that echoes the exhibition! To be listened to at home or as you wander through the paintings, this musical selection offers a new way of discovering Nicolas Régnier's paintings.

Through their lyrics, performers and moods, the tracks reveal the personality and extraordinary career of the painter, this ^17th-century free man.

A wonderful artistic and musical discovery!