The splendid History of the King of Louis XIV could not be forgotten; the history of his successor must be similarly represented, and what could this be but a series of woven paintings. The flower of the time was an exquisitely complicated decoration on a small scale. The larger expression was not spontaneous.
Louis XV, poor boy, was not old enough to have had many events outside the nursery, so it took imagination—perhaps that of the elegant profligate, Duke d’Antin—to suggest an occasion of appropriate splendour and significance. The official reception of the Turkish ambassador in 1721 was the subject chosen, and under the direction of Charles Parrocel became a superb work, full of court magnificence of the day and a valuable portrayal to us of the boyhood of the king.
The same type of big picture was continued in the series of Hunts of Louis XV, lovely forest scenes wherein much unsportsmanlike elegance displays itself in the persons of noble courtiers. The Duc d’Antin favoured these and they were reproduced until 1745.
It is probable that the Bible fell into neglect in those days, too heavy a volume for pointed, perfumed fingers accustomed to no books at all. Bossuet, Voltaire, were they not obliged to set to the sonorous music of their voices the reforming and satirical attacks on manners and morals of the aristocrats at a time when books lay all unread? But at the Gobelins ateliers the Bible, wiped clean of dust, was much consulted for inspiration in cartoons. Charles Coypel dipped into the Old Testament, and Jouvenet into the New, with the result of several suites of tapestries of great elegance—all of which might much better have been painted on canvas and framed.
Charles Coypel, the talented member of a talented family of painters, also made popular the heroine Armide, who seemed almost to come of the Bible, since Tasso had set her in his Christian Jerusalem Delivered. The seductive palace and entrancing gardens where Renaud was kept a prisoner, gave opportunity for fine drawing in this set.
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HUNTS OF LOUIS XV
Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry