Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and administrator. He became academician in 1742 and director of the Académie in 1778. He was the First Painter to the Duke of Orléans and in 1770 to the King, replacing Boucher. He was director of the Gobelins, the Musée des Gobelins has many tapestries made after his cartoons.

Although he painted a number of rustic genre scenes and was an occasional designer of vases and picture frames, he was principally active as a painter of large-scale history and religious works. In this aspect of his output he forms a link in the 18th-century tradition of French history painting that runs from Jean Jouvenet to the Neo-classicism of Jacques-Louis Da...