Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

Born the tenth son of a stonecutter in Burgundy, Pierre Prudon (b. 1758, Cluny, France - d. 1823, Paris) altered both halves of his name and became Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, as if to relate himself to Peter Paul Rubens and to evoke landed gentry. He began studying painting in Dijon at age sixteen. He arrived in Paris in 1780, but his experience in Italy from 1784 to 1787, when...