Minerva as Patroness of the Arts, in a studio with a Personification of the Arts

The first master of Nicolas Poussin, Varin began his career in Avignon, and then Les Andelys in Normandy, before moving to Paris in 1612. Appointed Peintre Ordinaire du Roi by King Louis XIII in 1613, he was presented to the Regent, Marie de' Medici, and was commissioned to produce decorations for the Palais du Luxembourg, Paris, which were never executed, possibly because of his association with the engraver and poet Etienne Durand, who was executed for treason in 1618. Among the surviving works from Varin's years in Paris are The Marriage at Cana for the high altar of SS Gervais et Protais (c. 1618-20; Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Atts & Archéologie), The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, which was given by Anne of Austria to the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites (1642; in situ, now called St. Joseph-des-Carmes), and Saint Carlo Borromeo giving alms for S Jacques-de-la-Boucherie (1627; Paris, St Etienne-du-Mont). His Entombment (Paris, Louvre) shows the influence of Jacques Bellange and Georges Lallemand and confirms Varin as both a Mannerist and an eclectic who had studied paintings by or engravings after such late sixteenth-century Italian and Flemish masters as Taddeo Zuccaro, the Cavaliere d'Arpino, Giorgio Vasari and Marten de Vos.