Antoine Ranc

Antoine Ranc (c. 1634 – 1716) was a French painter.

Life

Antoine Ranc was born at Montpellier around 1634 to a modest family. He became a student of the Flemish artist Jean Zueil, nicknamed "le français" (the Frenchman), who probably brought the north European painting style to that city in the Languedoc. Ranc is also known to have been apprenticed to Zueil's brother in law, the Poussinist Samuel Boissière (1620–1703). Ranc then travelled to Rome around 1654 with François Bertrand, another painter from Montpellier, who became godfather to Ranc's third son in 1677.

From 1667, Ranc was back in his birthplace, where he received the prestigious commission for a major painting for the high altar of the église Notre-Dame-des-Tables. In 1671, the young Hyacinthe Rigaud joined his studio and copied the Van Dycks which Ranc owned. Ranc then became associated with Jean de Troy (1638–1691), an artist from Toulouse who had just set up in Montpellier and who would later become director of the newly created Académie des Arts.

Antoine's first two sons, Jean and Guillaume (born 1684) both became painters. In 1685 two more sons followed, one of whom was Jean-baptiste, later a royal engineer. On Jean de Troy's death, Ranc was in even greater demand for religious paintings. The canons of Montpellier Cathedral commissioned de Troy to paint a Curing of the Paralytic and Jesus giving the keys to St Peter to be placed either side of Bourdon's painting, on the condition Ranc worked from Poussin's two drawings. De Troy completed the first of these vast canvases, but the second remained unfinished on his death and it was completed by Ranc (main image) and the landscape artist Charmeton (background landscape)