Nicolas Tournier

Nicolas Tournier was baptised in 1590 in the small town of Montbéliard in the Franche-Comté, where his parents, protestants from Besançon, had sought refuge. Virtually nothing is known about his early life and training, though it is likely he was initially trained by his father and uncle, who were both painters. It is not known when he left Montbéliard, but he was active in Rome between 1619 and 1626, where he was exposed to the art of Caravaggio, which had a profound impact upon Tournier. Many of the works he produced in Rome also exhibit stylistic similarities with Bartolomeo Manfredi. Tournier then returned to France and is documented in Carcassonne in 1627. 

From 1632 he was based in Toulouse, but also worked throughout the region, in Carcassonne and Narbonne, for the rest of his career. He received important decorative commissions including for the Cathedral of  Saint-Étienne in Toulouse and for Narbonne Cathedral. Together with Nicolas Régnier, Tournier ranks one of the most important French followers of Caravaggio, and an adherent of what the German art historian and painter Joachim von Sandrart dubbed the 'Mandrediana Methodus', whereby individual figures and subjects taken from Caravaggio were mixed and matched, and which effectively used the expressive power of chiaroscuro and the simplification of poses and composition to achieve dramatic intensity.