(John Baptist Blain de), a very famous painter of fruit and flowers, was born at Caen in 1654. Louis XIV. gave him a pension, and an apartment in the galleries of the Louvre; and he was nominated counsellor of the Academy of Painting. His fruit and flowers have all the freshness and beauty of nature; the very dew seems to trickle down their stalks, with all the lustre and transparency of the diamond, while the insects upon them seem perfectly alive and animated. This ingenious painter died at Paris in 1715.