POMPONE DE BELLIÈVRE
Robert Nanteuil
PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE
Gérard Edelinck
It is usual, in reviews of this period of art, to find the name of the noted Fleming, Gérard Edelinck, mentioned side by side with Nanteuil. With a technique akin to that of the Rubens school, in long, easy strokes, he models his figures and his draperies, and while he lacks the creative originality of Nanteuil, working always after the designs of other artists, his range of subjects is far more extended. In the striking likeness of the painter Philippe de Champaigne, he has left us a splendid example of his powers. His plate after the “Madonna of Francis I,” by Raphael, is a model of interpretative engraving, and when he undertakes to reproduce the canvases of Lebrun, he produces prints admittedly more attractive and brilliant than the originals.
Another man whom we cannot afford to omit from even this hasty enumeration is Antoine Masson, were it only for that superb “gray-haired man,” the portrait of Guillaume de Brisacier, brilliant, powerful, revealing an absolute mastery of the graver. The fact is, that we are drifting now toward an ever-growing worship of technique, at the expense of higher issues, artistically. Many names claim our notice, as we continue our survey, and a few will not be denied,—Gérard Audran, with his great series of the “Triumphs of Alexander,” a series, which, for breadth and beauty of treatment, assures him a place among the leaders, near Edelinck.
BOSSUET