Charles
Lebrun, / Charles le Brun (1619-90).
French painter and art theorist, the dominant artist of Louis
XIV's reign. After training with Vouet he went to Rome in
1642 and worked under Poussin, becoming a convert to the
latter's theories of art. He returned to Paris in 1646. From
1661 he became established in the employ of Louis XIV, in
1662 he was raised to the nobility and named Premier Paintre
du roi, and in 1663 he was made director of the reorganized
Academie, which he turned into a channel for imposing a
codified system of orthodoxy in matters of art. His lectures
came to be accepted as providing the official standards of
artistic correctness and, formulated on the basis of the
Classicism of Poussin, gave authority to the view that every
aspect of artistic creation can be reduced to teachable rule
and precept. In 1698 his small illustrated treatise Methode
pour apprendre a dessiner les passions... was posthumously
published; in this, again following theories of Poussin, he
purported to codify the visual expression of the emotions in
painting.
Among the most outstanding of his works for the king were
the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre (1663), and the famous Galerie
des Glaces (1679-84) and the Great Staircase (1671-78, destroyed in
1752) at Versailles. His importance in the history of French art is
twofold: his contributions to the magnificence of the Grand Manner
of Louis XIV and his influence in laying the basis of academicism.
Many of the leading French artists of the next generation trained
in his studio. Lebrun was a fine portraitist and an extremely
prolific draughtsman.
Le Grand Escalier du château de Versailles. peint
par Van
der Meulen et Charles Le Brun Œuvre d'art originale datant du
18e
siècle
a été réalisée
par l'artiste Louis
de Surugue
(1686 - 1762)
These are from Le Grand Escalier de Versailles./The Grand
Staircase of Chateau Versailles, and the Ambassadors Stairway
./Le Grand
Escalier du Château Versailles, dit Escalier des
Ambassadeurs] [Paris, De l'Imprimerie royale., nd
The remarkable collection of engravings known as the Cabinet du
Roi originated with Louis XIV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert
(1619-1683), who commissioned engravers to create designs for the
King's tapestries and furniture. Colbert set up a workshop and
repository called the Chalcography of the Louvre to employ
engravers and printers, and to conserve the copperplates produced
for the engravings. As early as 1662, engravings were made to
record special celebrations given by the King at Versailles. They
were well-received, and by an order in council in 1667, an enormous
artistic endeavour was undertaken to record the King's collections
of paintings, sculpture, and coins, as well as plans of the gardens
and buildings and the interior decoration of the royal Residences..
Beginning in 1670, these engravings were published in volumes and
presented as gifts to visiting dignitaries. To offset the
cost of production, Colbert offered restrikes of them for sale, and
in 1727, the first complete set of the Cabinet du Roi engravings
was published in 23 volumes. . The engravings in this fifth
volume of the set, 52 of which are taken from the interior
decoration of the Chateau Versailles, include: the entranceway with
the staircase and surrounding frescoes, the frescoes on the ceiling
of the gallery Ice, and the tables on the ceilings of the Salon of
the Salon of War and Peace, at either end of the gallery.For more
than 30 years, Charles Le Brun was the prime overseer of art works
created and manufactured for Colbert and Louis XIV. In the
Chateau Versailles, he decorated the Hall of Mirrors, the Great
Flats King and Queen, and the Stairway Ambassadors at the entrance
to the palace. A mammoth artistic project, the decoration included
the painting of vaults, niches, frescoes, statues and medallions
all showing highlights from Louis' reign (1661-1678).
Copperplates were made after Le Brun, Massé and Antoine
Coypel's
designs by engravers Audran, Baudet, Beauvais, Cars, Desplaces,
Dupuis, Simoneau, Surugue and Tardieu, among others .This is
sold as a completet item suitable for breaking or for restoration ;
many of the later plates have old water marks but the paper is
remarkably thick and high quality to survive this. 16 from the
original 24 pages .. .sheet
size 66 cm x 92 cm size of
plate mark varies;
|
