THE GOBELINS
IT would certainly be unfair to consider Louis XIV and espeacially Colbert, from the point of view of the part played of the royal manufactory of crown furniture at the Gobelins, as being merely unconscious instruments. There is no doubt that a formal act of will on their part entered into this creation. But, once having done this justice, especially to Colbert, we are bound to remark, if we would wish to take a sane view of events, that an institution of this kind was, at the moment when it was established in France, the result of a series of previous efforts, all turned in the same direction; was the result also of a general movement of centralization which was to be one of the sources of weakness, of the system of government adopted in France. ¶ The founding of the academy of painting and sculpture had completed the organization of art in the great sense; the founding of the manufactory of the Gobelins was destined to bring about the centralization of the minor arts and to strike a blow at the old edifice of the rules of the corporations. We must make no mistake: from the artistic point of view, the monarchy largely began the salutary work of emancipation which the French Revolution was to complete, and we may well be surprised that right-minded persons should discover a source of weakness and decadence in the modifications introduced into the life of the workshops. To be logical we should have to blame the monarchy itself, which, nearly 150 years before the Revolution, began, by a devious course it is true, to take away all force from restrictive laws, from rules and regulations which already seemed out of date at the end of the middle ages. It will be seen that, though the complete abolition of the rules of the corporations did, in certain cases, become a cause of confusion, we should do wrong to look upon it as the sole cause of the degeneration in artistic feeling in the minor arts at the commencement of the nineteenth century. The suppression of the corporations under the Revolution was as inevitable an event as was under Louis XIV the establishment of official artistic workshops. The whole lay in the manner of setting to work to decree those two measures. ¶ To second his views, Colbert was fortunate enough to have at hand an exceptional man, one who was at the same time an organizer and an artist, two qualities rarely united in one and the same brain; and he also had the good sense to select him in spite of appearances. He did more, for after selecting him he left him the most complete liberty. And yet Charles Le Brun might have passed as suspect in the minds of both the king and Colbert. ¶ Born in Paris on February 24, 1619, Charles Le Brun was the son of Nicholas Le Brun, a sculptor. His first masters were Perrier, a Burgundian painter, and Simon Vouet; and it was doubtless through Vouet’s intermediary that he became acquainted with the Chancellor Séguier, in whom he was later to find a firm friend and a constant protector. Some works executed for the Cardinal de Richelieu earned for him the title of painter to the king in 1638. In 1642, he accompanied Nicolas Poussin to Rome and was admitted as a master-painter into the corporation. He returned to Paris in 1646, received the title of valet de chambre to the king, and married Suzanne Butay, a painter’s daughter. ¶ A law-suit between the wardens of the Gild of Painters and the king’s painters, the so-called ‘patent painters,’ suddenly made Le Brun conspicuous, and, after the favourable decision pronounced by the parliament, with the support of Séguier he contributed not a little towards the definite foundation of the academy of painting (1648). But, while fighting strenuously for the principles of his art, Le Brun neglected no opportunity of practising it, and executed for a number of Paris mansions a series of large decorative compositions, for which he had acquired the taste in Italy. The houses of Bertrand de la Bazinière, treasurer of the Épargne; of Marshal d’Aumont; of the Chevalier de Jars; of Inselin, treasurer of the Chambre aux Deniers; of Lambert de Thorigny, president of the Chambre des Comptes, were decorated by him in turns. In the last of these mansions he painted the Galerie d’Hercule, which still exists, and the sight of which eventually determined the Superintendent Fouquet to send for Le Brun to Vaux (1657). Here, in the sumptuous residence of Vaux, of which Fouquet was to have the enjoyment for so short a while, Le Brun displayed his full powers. He not only painted or designed such compositions as the Apothéose d’Hercule, the Triomphe de la Fidélité, L’Aurore, Le Sommeil, the Palais du Soleil, but he also directed the sculptors, ornament workers and silversmiths, the tapestry workers and embroiderers, and managed the manufactory of high-warp tapestry established by Fouquet at Maincy. He supplied so large a number of models and cartoons for tapestry, that many of his compositions could be executed only much later at the manufactory of the Gobelins; the Chasses de Méléagre, Mars et Venus, Jupiter allaité par la chèvre Amalthée, five pieces representing the history of Constantine, the Muses, all bear witness to the prodigious fertility of an artist who, like the great Italians of the Renaissance, was lavish in production while developing his admirable administrative qualities. ¶ If these gigantic works at the Château de Vaux had not succeeded in earning for him the esteem of Mazarin and of the queen-mother, Anne of Austria, and also in drawing the attention of the king (for Le Brun was the organizer of the great fêtes given by the Superintendent in 1659), it might have happened that our artist would have incurred the same disgrace as his patron. Very fortunately this was not so; for once talent was able to silence envy, and Le Brun was admirably served by circumstances. In 1660, the king ordered a large picture of him, Alexandre pénétrant dans la tente de Darius, and the city of Paris instructed him to erect a triumphal arch on the Place Dauphine for the entry into Paris of Louis XIV and his queen, Maria Theresa. In 1661 he entered into relations with Colbert; in 1662 he received the much-coveted title of ‘first painter to the king.’ We see, therefore, that his connexion with Fouquet—and it does not seem that Le Brun was ever placed in the painful situation of having to deny the man who had enabled him to make his mark—so far from harming him, had, on the contrary, done him good service. Perhaps the king, at the same time that Colbert began to suspect his exceptional powers as an organizer and administrator, recognized in Le Brun one of those men who were to be so useful to his thirst for stately glory and royal pomp.
GOBELIN TAPESTRY, PSYCHE’S BATH, BY LE LORRAIN; END OF LOUIS XIV; IN THE LOUVRE
SECTION OF THE BORDER OF THE SAME TAPESTRY
A MARQUETRY BUREAU BY ANDRÉ CHARLES BOULE IN THE PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU
