The Raising of Lazarus

This Raising of Lazarus, painted in 1711 and now at LACMA, dates from the final productive phase of Jouvenet's career — just two years before the stroke that paralysed his right hand. It shows him still working at the height of his powers on one of his most beloved Gospel subjects. The 1706 Louvre version of the same subject was already celebrated as a masterpiece, and this later canvas likely reflects sustained demand from private or ecclesiastical patrons for Jouvenet's treatment of major Gospel themes. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art holds significant examples of European Baroque painting, and the presence of a Jouvenet reflects his international reputation in his own lifetime. Works by French academic masters entered American collections primarily through the great sales of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Lazarus subject demanded from Jouvenet everything he did best: a large crowd of varied figures, a miracle demanding visible wonder, and the dramatic staging of a body returning from death.

Oil on canvas in Jouvenet's fully mature late style. The 1711 date suggests richer, more saturated colour than his early works — deep umbers and crimsons punctuated by the bright linen of Lazarus's grave wrappings. His brushwork remains energetic despite his age, with particular confidence in crowd passages and drapery. The composition would have been developed from established models, possibly referencing his own 1706 Louvre version.