Donatien NONNOTTE known as "Donat NONNOTTE" is a French painter, having started in historical paintings and after 1737 specialized in portraits. Son of Thomas NONNOTTE and Claudine VOIRIN, winegrowers on rue Saint-Paul in Besancon, Donatien was born on February 10, 1708. He was hired very early on by his uncle, Jean NONOTTE (his father's brother), a painter, better known for painting signs and funeral badges that portraits. Under the direction of his oncle, he participated, in 1728, of the Coronation of the Virgin for the Church of the Madeleine in Besançon. After this apprenticeship, but provided with a skillful brush placed at the service of an undisputed talent, at the age of 20, Donatien NONNOTTE, went to Paris in 1728, then to Versailles, where he was admitted to the school of the first painter of King François LEMOYNE. He made fast progress, especially in the portrait section. Donatien NONNOTTE stood out from the other students. In 1824, François LEMOYNE employed him to paint the backgrounds and accessories for the dome of the Chapel of the Virgin, of the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris. Then, between 1733 and 1736, for the ceiling of the Salon d'Hercules in Versailles. During the same period, Donatien made several paintings not commissioned and mainly with historical subjects. He is noticed by "The surprise of Besançon", a historical painting on the theme of a battle which took place on June 20 and 21, 1575 and which opposed the reformed and the Catholics of the city. During the same period, Donatien made several paintings not commissioned and mainly with historical subjects. He is noticed by "The surprise of Besançon", a historical painting on the theme of a battle which took place on June 20 and 21, 1575 and which opposed the reformed and the Catholics of the city. Unfortunately in 1736, the Duke of Antin, who was his mecene, died. Then the following year, his Master, LEMOYNE pass away. These two disappearances annihilated all hope for NONNOTTE to obtain a boarding school grant to go to Rome to complete her knowledge. He tried to paint some mythological scenes in the taste of LEMOYNE, but did not succeed in triumphing over his competitors. Fortunately, in the same year (October 27, 1737) he married his neighbor and widow, Marie-Elisabeth BASTARD de la GRAVIERE, widow of Antoine DUCHASTEL, a bourgeois. She brought him a modest ease which allowed him to abandon decorative painting and historical subjects to devote exclusively to commissioned portraits. In 1741, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture with the portraits he made of the painters Pierre d'ULIN and Sébastien LECLERC. Associate of the Academy of Fine Arts of Lyon, he began to make portraits of the elite. He settled in Lyon in 1754, to give painting lessons at the free school that enlightened amateurs had just restored under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Painting. He replaced Charles GRANDON, and was director in 1769. He was the teacher of the painters Jean-François GILLE and François-Hubert DROUAIS. Donatien NONNOTTE died in Lyon on February 5, 1785.