Dominique Barrière

1618 Marseilles – 1678 Rome

The draughtsman and etcher Dominique Barrière settled in Rome about 1640, his name being first recorded in 1643 in the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina, near the artists’ colony around Via del Babuino. Barrière was an engaging Little Master and evidently belonged to the relatively large group of artists who were trying their luck in the Rome of that time and, unlike the big names of their craft such as Claude and Gaspar Dughet, had to struggle to make a living. Although the artist left an extensive oeuvre of over two hundred engravings at his death, he must have lived in great poverty for some of the time, as he repeatedly had to turn to the Collège Saint Louis des Français for help in supporting his large family. Stylistically he very much owed to the example of Jacques Callot and his school as well as to such Dutch artists as Johannes Glauber, Abraham Genoels and Adriaen van der Cabel.