MARTIN, Jean-Baptiste

French painter, called Martin des Batailles. He trained in the studio of Laurent de La Hyre. There the Marquis de Vauban noticed his skill in making accurate drawings of plans and elevations of fortified sites and introduced him to the battle painter Adam Frans van der Meulen, who from 1664 was employed by Louis XIV, mainly to paint scenes commemorating Louis's military triumphs, many of which were used as tapestryGLOSSARYAs historical climatologists have not shown that Renaissance Italian winters and springs were warmer than they are now, it is puzzling that Italy did not fabricate tapestries to decorate and draught-proof the stony rooms of its palaces until 1545, when Cosimo I set up a manufactory in Florence. To hardiness or stinginess (tapestry was by far the most expensive form of wall decoration) we owe the existence of such secular frescoed decorative schemes as the labours of the months in the castle at Trent (c. 1407), the Arthurian scenes of Pisanello and the courtly ones of Mantegna in the Ducal Palace of Mantua, the delicious calendar fantasies of Cossa and others in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara - and, doubtless, many others that await liberation from whitewash or later panelling. These are all in situations where northern patrons would have used tapestries. These were imported, chiefly from Flanders, into Italy. The influence of their hunting and ceremonial scenes in particular registered on Italian 'gothic' painting or illumination and stained glass, and in literature. But the Italians did not make them. The most famous of all 'Italian' tapestries, those for the Sistine Chapel designed by Raphael, were made in Brussels from the full-scale coloured patterns, or cartoons, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Nor is it clear whether imported tapestries were used habitually or simply to add grandeur to special occasions. Even when Cosimo's manufactory was in being, and working from designs by court artists of the calibre of Bronzino, Salviati and Allori, his own headquarters, the Palace of the Signoria (now the Palazzo Vecchio), was being decorated with frescoes. The subject is underexplored. designs. He quickly became van der Meulen's closest and chief collaborator. Indeed, the closeness of collaboration between the master and his pupils created a homogeneous style, in which the hand of the individual is difficult to determine. On van der Meulen's death (1690), Martin and Sauveur Lecomte (?1659-95) were ordered to complete the series of twelve paintings showing the King's Conquests, seven of which were still unfinished.

On Lecomte's premature death in 1695, he was replaced by another of van der Meulen's pupils, Pierre-Denis Martin (Martin le jeune; c. ?1663-1742), who is generally assumed, without evidence, to have been Jean-Baptiste Martin's nephew. By 1699 the two Martins had completed the series, and the paintings were installed at the château of Marly (destroyed). Martin had meanwhile acted as official artist on Louis XIV's campaigns in the Dauphiné (1688-89), and in the sieges of Mons (1691) and Namur (1692).

In 1710 he was commissioned by Leopold, Duke of Lorraine (reg 1698-1729), to create a series of cartoons depicting the life of his father, Charles V, nominal Duke of Lorraine; the Victories of Charles V (1711-18; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) were woven in Nancy. Later Jean-Baptiste Martin and Pierre-Denis Martin were among the 12 artists employed in the decoration of the hôtel belonging to the Duc de Bourbon, Grand Maître de la Maison du Roi, at Versailles, which was overseen by the architect Robert de Cotte. Each provided two large and two small views of royal palaces (now Versailles, Château and Mairie). Jean-Baptiste's son, also called Jean-Baptiste Martin (d after 1741), completed the Siege of Mons and the Siege of Namur (both Versailles, Château) after his father's death.