An outspoken champion of academic art, Gérard de Lairesse was renowned during his lifetime as a painter and admired also in the last decade of his life - after he suddenly went blind in 1690 - as a critic and art theorist.

Son of the painter Renier de Lairesse, Gérard was born in 1640 in Liège where he trained until his early twenties, when a love affair gone wrong forced him to flee the city. Soon afterwards he made his way to Amsterdam, where he became involved in a society of painters fascinated by French civilization and art, and his classicizing style earned him the nickname "Dutch Poussin".

In 1655 he sat for Rembrandt (fig. 1); in the years that followed, De Lairesse's reputation as a painter...