CHATEAU D'OEX, Switzerland The French painter Balthus, considered one of the world's greatest realist painters, died on Sunday at his Rossiniere chalet in southeast Switzerland aged 92, family sources said.

Balthus, whose full name was Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, left a medical clinic where he was being treated on Saturday to return home to his chalet. He died ten days before his 93rd birthday.

According to an AFP report, French President Jacques Chirac said he learned of Balthus's death with "particular emotion" and described him as "one of the most eminent artists of the 20th century," a man who "detested the banal above all."

"An artist of exceptional talent in drawing as well as painting, Balthus belonged completely to his work, which he wanted to protect from the ravages of time," Chirac said.

He added that he had met the artist several times and that apart from the man's genius, he appreciated Bathus's "profound personality."

Chirac also conveyed his "deepest condolences" to his widow and family.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin also paid tribute to the painter, noting his originality. "He showed real independence throughout the century by not belonging to any school, choosing instead to hold a unique place in the artistic world," Jospin said.

Born of a family of Polish origin in Paris on February 29, 1908, Balthus spent his childhood between Berlin, Bern and Geneva, and was entirely self-taught.

His work would influence many a poet, not least Rainer Maria Rilke, who was so impressed by Balthus's early material that he wrote the preface to a series of drawings the painter did when he was 12 and released in 1921.

By the age of 17, Balthus was passing his days in Paris at the Louvre, where his own works would eventually be displayed, studying the paintings of Nicolas Poussin, and in particular "Echo et Narcisse" which he copied.

All his works were of a meticulous geometrical composition that many said provoked a feeling of alienation, of time in suspension, like "La Phalene" and his three versions of "Reve" from the end of the 1950s.

By the fifties his choice of colors had become clearer and he produced perhaps his most famous painting: "Passage du Commerce Saint-Andre" in 1952.

In 1961 he was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome by his friend and Minister Andre Malraux -- a post he would retain until 1978.

On Sunday, the former mayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli, paid tribute to Balthus. "His refined classicism, his rigor and the mystery of his art will be missed in the frontierless world of art," Rutelli said.

While in "retirement", Balthus said: "Art is work" and that he considered himself not an artist, but a worker.