Morin. Cardinal Richelieu
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches
Morin. Pierre Maugis des Granges
Maître-d’Hôtel of Louis XIII
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches
It is incredible that so little should be known about an artist of his prominence, particularly as at that time the best artists were constantly “en evidence” and undertaking distant travels for the sake of their education and in order to gain patrons. We must assume that Morin lived a very quiet life and cared little for recognition. Who were his first masters remains a mystery; the references which are made to him in the records of the time point only to the fact that he was always held in high esteem for the excellence of his work, and that everywhere his serious character commanded respect. Two things are nevertheless certain concerning him. One is that he had begun by becoming a well-schooled painter, for his etched work is of singularly uniform excellence; the other is that he had been influenced exclusively by the Flemish School. It was the etching of Van Dyck which tempted him to give up the brush for the graver, and it was his own peculiarly calm and conscientious temperament which impelled him to carry the original technique of that prince of portraiture to the last degree of finish.
On the other hand, it was from another Flemish artist, Philippe de Champaigne, who had made France his home, that he received inspiration and guidance throughout his life-work. In return for this he devoted himself to the faithful reproduction of as many of that master’s canvases as he could engrave before his death.
Morin’s work consists of a few figure-subjects and landscapes and fifty portraits. These are among the finest that were engraved during the seventeenth century, and they have the distinction of illustrating the reign of Louis XIII and his minister Richelieu. As an historical gallery they possess as much importance as the portraits made later by the school of Nanteuil: four of them are after Van Dyck, fourteen are from the works of various painters, including Titian, and all the rest, thirty-two in number, reproduce the dignified canvases of Philippe de Champaigne. It was natural for Morin to turn to the Flemish painter, not only because the latter had soon after his arrival become the painter of the court and the head of the French School, but because his calm, precise art was admirably suited to the engraver’s work.
The canvases of Philippe de Champaigne have little of the power of Rubens, or the coloring and supreme elegance of Van Dyck, nor do they possess the depth and originality of the portraits of Rembrandt, but they are characterized by an uncommon strength of draughtsmanship and composition, and they unfailingly exhibit such profound seriousness, restraint and dignity as few masters can boast of. As in the case of most of Morin’s portraits, it is hard to gaze upon them without experiencing that peculiar sensation of familiarity with the human being represented, without being convinced that here is the bare truth just as an intelligent and thoroughly sincere nature beheld it, without feeling that some of the model’s soul has passed into the canvas. It could not be otherwise with the work of an artist who had toiled so earnestly to follow an ideal, and who himself had been visited by so much affliction. De Champaigne became at the end of his life a Jansenist and a devoted Port Royalist—that is, a member of a community of austere human beings whose lives were so simple and whose thoughts were so high that they were a perpetual reproach to the selfish clergy of the day and the empty butterflies who crowded the salons of Versailles.