PIERRE MIGNARD
Le Bran’s successor in the direction of the Academy and the Gobelin works, Pierre Mignard (1612–1695), called “Le Romain” owing to his long domicile in Rome after the completion of his studies under Vouet, did not have his precursor’s large decorative faculty and sweeping ease of execution. Yet the excessively affected grace and the careful finish of his pictures, of which The Virgin of the Grapes (No. 628) is a thoroughly characteristic instance, helped to raise him to an exalted position in the opinion of his contemporaries. To this day the affected style of prettiness of which he was the high priest is known as “mignardise.” His power was altogether insufficient for the ambitious decorative tasks he set himself in emulation of Le Brun. If he has any claim to the esteem of posterity, it is for having left the world a portrait gallery of the notable men and women of his time—portraits which are by no means free from flattery and mannered grace, but constitute, nevertheless, a valuable historical record. Of these the Louvre owns the Portrait of the Artist at Work in his Studio (No. 640); the Portrait of Françoise d’Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon (No. 639); and the life-size group of Louis of France, Son of Louis XIV., his Wife, and their three Children (No. 638).
Colbert and Le Brun had succeeded but too well in carrying out the powerful minister’s ambition to direct French art towards industrial and decorative aims, to train an army of capable producers, and to place the whole organisation on what may be called a business basis. The system was, however, not favourable for the growth of independent genius. With few exceptions, the whole generation of painters that grew up under Le Brun’s régime are of no significance to the history of art. There were among them many capable craftsmen, but they only repeated in a feebler way what Le Brun had done on a more imposing and dazzling scale. Whole dynasties of painters arose, like the Boulognes and the Coypels, who, under official patronage, filled acres of canvas with florid, theatrical renderings of scriptural subjects, and with the bombastic mock-heroics of classic history and mythology seen through baroque spectacles.