The fame of both, the Bolognese Academy and the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome promoted the creation of the Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris, in 1648. The French Academy was in part created due to the artists’ will to free themselves from the ‘iron’ regime of guilds, which was based on apprenticeship and on the presence of a chef d’oeuvre (‘master of works’), whom had the full power to authorize or not the exercise of the artistic profession. Certain artists who worked for the king had already freed themselves from that formula. Now everyone who entered the Academy would be free from such a routine. Except for Simon Vouet, almost all the renowned painters in Paris were members of this institution, whose school was directed by the then young painter Charles Le Brun, who had recently returned from a stay in Rome.
The Academy suffered a bitter opposition, and although in 1654 it obtained the right to monopolize artistic teaching, this privilege was then of little effectiveness. The effective power of the institution began when Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert was named in January 1664 as Superintendent of Bâtiments (‘buidings’), decided to officially protect the Academy, and decreed, a few months later, that “the King resolved to use, from now on, his Academy for the decoration of royal residences”. As a result of this, the institution received new statutes, and it was established the famous Prix de Rome, a group of scholarships that was awarded by the French government between 1663 and 1968 to enable young French artists to study in Rome. The students who won the first place in each artistic category went to study at the subsidiary of the Académie de France in Rome.
Painter Charles Le Brun went on to direct the Academy, and was in charge of the interior decoration of the Palace of Versailles. Le Brun, under Minister of Finance Nicolas Fouquet, had previously directed a tapestry-making workshop founded by said Minister in Maincy, near Vaux. When Fouquet fell into disgrace for his abuses in the management of State funds, Louis XIV took charge of the workers of the factory, the tools and the director, and re-installed it in the former dye factory of the Gobelin brothers, in Paris, for the direct service of the Crown. Thus was born the world-famous tapestry manufactory of “the Gobelins”, which gave so many lusters to the royal house of France, and to its first director Le Brun.
In the old tapestry workshop created by Fouquet in Maincy, furniture was also manufactured. Minister Colbert then also oversaw these factories, and in 1667 installed the Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne (‘Royal Crown Furniture Manufacture’) in the Louvre, where talented cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732) created a new style (known now as Boulle work*) that involved the inlay of tortoiseshell, brass and pewter into ebony, a type of furniture decoration that would achieve great prestige.
The ornamental style of the court, in turn, was directed by the great ornamentist Jean Bérain (1640-1711), a draughtsman and designer, painter and engraver of ornaments, that became the artistic force in the Royal office of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi (‘Minor Pleasures of the King’) in charge of all the designs for court spectacles (from parties to funerals), and many designs for furnishings not covered by the Royal office of the Bâtiments du Roi (‘King’s buildings’). The “Berainesque” style of light arabesques and playful grotesques would become very influential for the Régence style predominant during the reign of Louis XV, that ultimately led to the development of Rococo.
Thus, now we are able to understand how the entire official machinery of French art was formed under the rule of the Sun King, Louis XIV. All these Royal offices and workshops were joined by the manufactory of tapestries of Beauvais, and the carpet manufactory of the Savonnerie, founded by Louis XIII and which was then restated.
Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) served as a court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him to be “the greatest French artist of all time”. Le Brun, whose art was influenced by that of Nicolas Poussin, is well known for his colorfully rhetorical decorative compositions with which he filled Versailles, the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte and the Hôtel Lambert in Paris, but his true personality is revealed in certain single or group portraits, like TheChancellor Séguier (ca. 1660-1661), and especially in the preparatory sketches of his works.
For King Louis XIV, Le Brun primarily executed large, gigantic paintings at Versailles and the Louvre palaces, but he also painted large quantities of works for religious corporations and private patrons. He was also a fine portraitist and an excellent draughtsman. Le Brun was not fond of landscape painting, which he thought as a mere exercise for the developing of technical abilities. What mattered the most for Le Brun was scholarly composition, with the ultimate goal to ‘nourish the spirit’. As director of the French academy, he promoted a philosophy to make paintings ‘speak’, through a series of symbols, costumes and/or gestures that allow artists to select for their compositions a series of narrative elements that gave their works a particular depth. For Charles Le Brun, a painting represented a story the viewer could read.
In his treatise published after his death, Méthode pour apprendre à dessiner les passions (‘Method for learning to draw passions’, 1698), Le Brun promoted in painting the expression of the emotions, which were known as “passions” at the time. Le Brun’s view on emotions were heavily influenced from the writings of French philosopher René Descartes. In this treatise, Le Brun outlined a diversity of human facial expressions as a template for subsequent artists to follow. He believed these “passions” could reveal the condition of the human soul. His thoughts and treatise had much influence on art theory during the following two centuries.
When Colbert retired from the ministry, Charles Le Brun was succeeded as director of the Academy and as the king’s first painter by Pierre Mignard (1612-1695), a talented portraitist, although with a sweet and flattering style. Mignard painted religious and mythological scenes, but most of his work focused on portraying the courtesans of his time: Maria Mancini, Madame de Grignan, Madame de Montespan, the Duchess of Portsmouth (beloved of Charles II of England)… Except for the portrait of Madame de Maintenon (the future morganatic wife of Louis XIV), all these beauties look the same.
Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) was born in Perpignan, when the Catalan region of Roussillon had just been ceded by Spain to France during the Treaty of the Pyrenees. His real name was Jacint Rigau-Ros i Serra. Rigaud arrived in Paris in 1681, where he won the prestigious scholarship of the Prix de Rome in 1682, but advised by Charles Le Brun he didn’t travel to Rome which was included in the scholarship, and was later received into the Académie in 1710, where he would rose to the top of the institution.
Rigaud would succeed in Paris and became the official painter of the court of Louis XIV. During his period in the Academy, he cultivated the ancient tradition of the solemn portrait. In Rigaud’s portraits, the king or ‘great’ figures appear wrapped in the magnificent drapes of their mantles, wearing their enormous wigs and with their faces full of pompous vainglory. Since Rigaud’s paintings captured very exact likenesses along with the subject’s costumes and background details, his paintings are considered precise records of contemporary fashions.
In the famous Portrait of Louis XIV (1701), Rigaud achieved a work that became the very epitome of the portrait of an absolutist ruler. It has since become the most recognizable portrait of the Sun King and the absolute image of royal power. Yet, this portrait represents more than just power, pomp and circumstance. The large canvas shows us an aging (62 years old) King, having reached the summit of his glory. Louis is depicted standing upright, three quarters to the left and with his feet in view, a pose calculated to presenting the greater part of his person. The king occupies the central space of the painting, the composition includes some vertical lines (column, king, and throne?), while the sovereign’s figure inscribes a pyramid that helps to give the impression of an elevated space.
A large marble pillar, the traditional symbol of power since the Renaissance as a stability symbol, holds the composition at the left. This massive column rests on a high stylobate whose two visible sides are decorated with reliefs depicting two royal virtues: the allegories of Justice (front, as the goddess Themis holding a set of scales in her hand) and strength (left, and hard to see). The painting is signed and dated on the base of the column, above the figure of Justice.
The sumptuous red/purple and gold drapery hanging as background is not only a motif of dignity (deep red/purple has been considered as the color of power and wealth since antiquity), but also echoes the drapes of the ornate, ermine-lined coronation robe wore by Louis. This coronation mantle of blue velvet brocade ornamented with the golden fleur-de-lis of the house of Bourbon is repeated in the upholstery of the chair, the cushion, and the cloth draped over the table below it: the royal regalia clearly “sets the scene”.
Rigaud painted Louis’ face on a small rectangular canvas that was later sewn onto the larger definitive canvas with his figure and the background. Rigaud exceled in depicting the king’s facial expression: his unapproachability is revealed in an ageing, impenetrable physiognomy. His lips are closed decisively and with a hint of irony, the eyes have a harsh, dark sheen, while his whole expression suggests intolerance. This is a ruler who is neither good nor bad, but beyond all moral categories.
The king stands before his throne and is placed high up on a platform. He is not bearing his regalia (he is uncrowned, the crown is placed at the table next to him as well as the ‘hand of justice’ scepter, Louis holds the scepter of his grandfather Henry IV upside down like a cane…), except for the sword of Charlemagne which hangs by his side and the sumptuous coronation mantle. The monarch wears a leonine wig and court garments (lace shirt and cuffs, brocade breeches, red-heeled shoes adorned with diamond buckles, and silk stockings), and the necklace of the Order of the Holy Spirit hangs from his neck.
Rigaud’s are magnificent canvases by technique and color palette, as were those painted by Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746), director of the Academy during the last years of the Sun King. They denote the same style and show the same soft and nuanced polychromy. But how different are all these portraits, including the famous portrait of Louis XIV, by Rigaud, from the magnificent portrait of Richelieu dressed in his cardinal’s clothes that, in his youth, Philippe de Champaigne had painted. The mood, certainly, had changed…
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Boulle work: (Also known as buhl work). A type of rich marquetry process or inlay perfected by the French cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732). It involves veneering furniture with tortoiseshell inlaid primarily with brass and pewter in elaborate designs, often incorporating arabesques.