LIONNE, HUGUES DE (1611-1671), French statesman, was born at Grenoble on the 11th of October 1611, of an old family of Dauphiné. Early trained for diplomacy, his remarkable abilities attracted the notice of Cardinal Mazarin, who sent him as secretary of the French embassy to the congress of Münster, and, in 1642, on a mission to the pope. In 1646 he became secretary to the queen regent; in 1653 obtained high office in the king’s household; and in 1654 was ambassador extraordinary at the election of Pope Alexander VII. He was instrumental in forming the league of the Rhine, by which Austria was cut off from the Spanish Netherlands, and, as minister of state, was associated with Mazarin in the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), which secured the marriage of Louis XIV. to the infanta Maria Theresa. At the cardinal’s dying request he was appointed his successor in foreign affairs, and, for the next ten years, continued to direct French foreign policy. Among his most important diplomatic successes were the treaty of Breda (1667), the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668) and the sale of Dunkirk. He died in Paris on the 1st of September 1671, leaving memoirs. He was a man of pleasure, but his natural indolence gave place to an unflagging energy when the occasion demanded it; and, in an age of great ministers, his consummate statesmanship placed him in the front rank.
See Ulysse Chevalier, Lettres inédites de Hugues de Lionne ... précédées d’une notice historique sur la famille de Lionne (Valence, 1879); J. Valfrey, La diplomatie française au XVIIIe siècle: Hugues de Lionne, ses ambassadeurs (2 vols., Paris, 1877-1881). For further works see Rochas, Biogr. du Dauphiné (Paris, 1860), tome ii. p. 87.
LIOTARD, JEAN ETIENNE (1702-1789), French painter, was born at Geneva. He began his studies under Professor Gardelle and Petitot, whose enamels and miniatures he copied with considerable skill. He went to Paris in 1725, studying under J. B. Massé and F. le Moyne, on whose recommendation he was taken to Naples by the Marquis Puysieux. In 1735 he was in Rome, painting the portraits of Pope Clement XII. and several cardinals. Three years later he accompanied Lord Duncannon to Constantinople, whence he went to Vienna in 1742 to paint the portraits of the imperial family. His eccentric adoption of oriental costume secured him the nickname of “the Turkish painter.” Still under distinguished patronage he returned to Paris in 1744, visited England, where he painted the princess of Wales in 1753, and went to Holland in 1756, where, in the following year, he married Marie Fargues. Another visit to England followed in 1772, and in the next two years his name figures among the Royal Academy exhibitors. He returned to his native town in 1776 and died at Geneva in 1789.
Liotard was an artist of great versatility, and though his fame depends largely on his graceful and delicate pastel drawings, of which “La Liseuse,” the “Chocolate Girl,” and “La Belle Lyonnaise” at the Dresden Gallery are delightful examples, he achieved distinction by his enamels, copper-plate engravings and glass painting. He also wrote a Treatise on the Art of Painting, and was an expert collector of paintings by the old masters. Many of the masterpieces he had acquired were sold by him at high prices on his second visit to England. The museums of Amsterdam, Berne, and Geneva are particularly rich in examples of his paintings and pastel drawings. A picture of a Turk seated is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the British Museum owns two of his drawings. The Louvre has, besides twenty-two drawings, a portrait of General Hérault and a portrait of the artist is to be found at the Sala dei pittori, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
See La Vie et les œuvres de Jean Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), étude biographique et iconographique, by E. Humbert, A. Revilliod, and J. W. R. Tilanus (Amsterdam, 1897).
LIP (a word common in various forms, to Teutonic languages, cf Ger. Lippe, Dan. laebe; Lat. labium is cognate), one of the two fleshy protuberant edges of the mouth in man and other animals, hence transferred to such objects as resemble a lip, the edge of a circular or other opening, as of a shell, or of a wound, or of any fissure in anatomy and zoology; in this last usage the Latin labium is more usually employed. It is also used of any projecting edge, as in coal-mining, &c. Many figurative uses are derived from the connexion with the mouth as the organ of speech. In architecture “lip moulding” is a term given to a moulding employed in the Perpendicular period, from its resemblance to an overhanging lip. It is often found in base mouldings, and is not confined to England, there being similar examples in France and Italy.