page_title: Merry-Joseph Blondel
section_title: Regnault's studio and the Prix de Rome
hierarchical_section_title: Merry-Joseph Blondel / Career / Regnault's studio and the Prix de Rome
context_page_description: Merry-Joseph Blondel was a French history painter of the Neoclassical school. He was a winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1803. After the salon of 1824, he was bestowed with the rank of Knight in the order of the Legion d'Honneur by Charles X of France and offered a professorship at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts: a position in which he remained until his death in 1853. In 1832, he was elected to a seat at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
  Blondel was a student of the Neoclassical master Baron Jean-Baptiste Regnault and from 1809, a lifelong friend of the painter Ingres.
  For much of Blondel's painting career, he was occupied with public commissions for paintings and frescoes in important buildings, including palaces, museums and churches. Blondel completed major commissions for the Palace of Fontainebleau, the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre Museum, the Brongniart Palace, the Luxembourg Palace, and the churches of St.Thomas Aquinas and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
context_section_description: In 1801, once again, Blondel convinced his father to break his apprenticeship contract as his drawing talent secured him a place in the studio of Baron Jean-Baptiste Regnault.  Within a year, Blondel had acquired the nickname Monsieur Cinq-Prix (Mr Five-prizes) among his peers at the studio, on account of the number of medals and prizes he had won for his drawing.  Another year on and Blondel's entry to the 1803 salon, a painting depicting Aeneas rescuing his father from the burning city of Troy, won him the Grand Prix de Rome.  However, due to a change in the system and the temporary suspension of scholarships, no students were sent to the French Academy in Rome that year and Blondel would have to wait until 1809 before he could take his place at the Villa Medici.
caption: Félicité Louise Julie Constance de Durfort (1782–1870), oil on canvas
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