BATTLE PAINTERS
The battle painter, Jacques Courtois (1621–1676), called Borgognone and Le Bourguignon, though born in France, was so completely under the spell of the art of Italy, the country where he spent almost his entire life, that he can scarcely be reckoned as belonging to the French school. His furious cavalry mêlées, though entirely imaginative (as such confused encounters of horsemen piercing each other’s ranks have never taken place in actual warfare), are painted, like the Cavalry Fight (No. 151), with a touch as swift as it is sure and expressive, and full of exuberant vitality.
Joseph Parrocel (1678–1704), who, during a prolonged visit to Rome had benefited by Borgognone’s teaching, could not, after his return to France in 1675, escape the current of thought which dominated his time, and introduced the stage-heroic note into his master’s sham realism. The glorification of his king is the purpose of such pictures as The Passage of the Rhine by Louis XIV. (No. 678). The chief interest is centred in the richly apparelled group on their prancing steeds in the foreground.