National Gallery of Art, The National Gallery of Art - Simon Vouet studied in Rome during the first decades of the seventeenth-century, succumbing to the pervasive, pan-European influence of Caravaggio's realist revolution in contemporary painting. In 1627, King Louis XIII called Vouet home to Paris to be his court painter, and Vouet refined Caravaggio's innovations into a style that would become the French school of painting so exquisitely represented by the Gallery's newly acquired Madonna and Child... The cult of the Virgin was in full swing during this period, inspiring the king to dedicate the empire to her in 1638. ...