| Pastorelle, style of Watteau, skin mount, stick mother of pearl, finely pierced, carved, & embossed with a sacrificial scene in gold. French. c. 1750. | Wyatt Colln. V. & A. Museum. |
Simon Vouet, recalled to Paris after a lengthy sojourn in Rome, was painting the nobles of the French court, and decorating for Richelieu the Palais Royal and the Château de Rueil. Poussin, French by birth, Italian and classic in sympathy, found the artistic atmosphere of Rome more congenial to him. In 1640, upon a pressing invitation from Louis XIII., he migrated to Paris, but, on account of court intrigues, the jealousies of his brother artists, and the malignity of Vouet, under pretence of bringing his wife from Rome, he left Paris in 1642, never to return.
The pupils of Vouet were Le Sueur and Charles le Brun. With this latter artist French painting enters upon a new phase, and it is impossible to overestimate the influence for good or for evil exercised by him during the latter half of the seventeenth century; nay, it extended practically over the whole of the century, since he began painting almost from his infancy.
The work of Le Brun, in spite of its many affectations, possesses many admirable qualities: such a composition, for example, as ‘The Entry of Alexander into Babylon,’ now in the Louvre, which, by the way, appears on an Italian fan in the Wyatt collection, at once stamps him as a master of decorative arrangement, and is typical both of his qualities and his limitations.
One of the most significant events in the history of French art was the founding of the Academy in 1648: in this Le Brun naturally took a leading part, as also in the foundation of the French School in Rome, of which he was the first director. The establishment of the Academy had a direct as well as an indirect bearing upon the fan, since on more than one occasion it ‘used the power of its prestige in defence of the just liberties of the éventaillistes.’[96]
Pierre Mignard (Le Romain), the lifelong rival of Le Brun, possessed something of the grand manner, derived from his study of the Carracci and Domenichino. In 1664 he was the head of the Academy of St. Luke, and in 1690, upon the death of Le Brun, he was appointed Director of the Academy of Painting, a post which he filled until his death in 1695.
We have said that during the sixteenth century, Italian influences on French art were paramount—these influences being entirely healthy and regenerative. Throughout the succeeding century the dominant influence was still Italian, but its effect was as deleterious as it had been formerly beneficent.