Nicolas Poussin.
Philippe de Champaigne, who came in his youth to France from Brussels, was a college friend of Poussin at Laon in 1623; and shares with him that same sense of freedom in his work. Poussin reached his goal in Rome through classical work, whilst Philippe de Champaigne devoted himself to portraiture, in which class of work he was most assiduous. His portraits of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin in the Musée Condé came from the Gallery in the Palais-Royal and are magnificent examples of his methods.
Another portrait-painter who deserves mention here is Jacques Stella, who painted the Grand Condé as the Hero of Rocroy, at the age of twenty-two—a portrait which is singularly attractive and has a special historical interest. This painting, which was always highly prized by the Bourbon-Condé family, now hangs in the Galerie des Batailles.
Another portrait of the same personage, painted after he had reaped further laurels at Fribourg and at Nördlingen, is by Beaubrun, the same artist who painted his only sister Geneviève de Bourbon. Both these pictures are in the Cabinet Clouet.
A figure which stands out with some insistence amongst French artists of the seventeenth century is Charles Le Brun. He was first of all a pupil of Simon Vouet, but becoming acquainted with Nicolas Poussin and urged on by enthusiasm for his work, followed this master to Rome. Returning to Paris with an established reputation, he fell in with Colbert, who perceived in him the very person needed for the Gobelins Factory. Le Brun fully realised these expectations since he not only organised this great concern but subsequently, with the assistance of Van Meulen, furnished designs for a History of the Kings of France, which was presently reproduced in tapestry in those celebrated workshops. He was also the founder of the French Academy in Rome; and Louis XIV, who conferred on him the office of Court Painter, took him to Flanders during the campaign of 1676. The portrait at Chantilly of Pomponne de Bellièvre, first President of the Parlement of Paris (engraved by Van Schuppen), represents his skill as a painter of portraits. His work can, however, be more profitably studied in the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre.
Eustache Le Sueur, another pupil of Simon Vouet, earned fame by his decorative work in the Hotel Lambert at Paris and by his Scenes from the Life of St. Bruno, now in the Louvre. He is represented at the Musée Condé by some fine drawings.
When Colbert was supplanted by Louvois another painter came to the front in the person of Mignard, also a pupil of Vouet. He studied in Rome, where he copied a number of paintings in the Farnese Gallery for the Cardinal of Lyons, Richelieu’s brother. He married the beautiful Anna Avolara, daughter of a Roman architect and model for his Madonnas, for which there was a great demand. No sooner had he acquired a certain amount of fame than the King of France commanded him to return home. On the way, however, he fell ill, and had to stop at Avignon. Here he first became acquainted with Molière; and the portrait which he painted of this great poet is beyond doubt his chef d’œuvre.[133] It occupies a prominent position in the Tribune at Chantilly, where it commands much attention and admiration. The great esteem in which the author of Tartuffe was held by the Grand Condé is well known and it is by a singular piece of good fortune that the best of all the existing portraits of Molière should have found its way into the Musée Condé. If Mignard—and not without reason—is sometimes accused of superficiality, this complaint must surely be modified by the evidence of this portrait, which displays an artist of very considerable power.
There is at Chantilly another portrait by Mignard of special interest. It is that of Madame Henriette d’Angleterre, the beautiful and ill-fated daughter of Charles I, first wife of Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, the King’s brother. He also repeatedly painted likenesses of the young King himself, including one sent to Spain to be shown to his intended bride the Infanta Marie Thérèse.
At a maturer age Louis XIV was painted by Rigaud, a pupil of Le Brun. The portrait of him at Chantilly (Cabinet Clouet) is a smaller replica, signed by the painter himself, of the larger work executed in 1701 for his son, Philip V of Spain—a painting which was, however, kept back at Versailles and is now in the Louvre.
Hyacinthe Rigaud was considered a great portrait-painter and many personages of note gave him commissions. There is also a fine portrait at Chantilly by his younger contemporary and follower, Largillière, of Mademoiselle Duclos, a celebrated tragédienne who made her début at the Comédie Française in 1683. She is here portrayed in the rôle of Ariane (Salle Caroline), and her sumptuous robes are painted with all the care and minuteness so characteristic of this artist. These qualities are again displayed in a portrait of the Princess Palatine, Charlotte Elizabeth, second wife of Philippe d’Orléans and mother of the Regent. In this portrait Largillière shows his highest talents, and had it not been for the fact that “Liselotte” (although already middle-aged) followed the taste of her time by permitting herself to be painted as a Naiad this would perhaps have been one of the most faithful likenesses of this interesting princess.