An Historical Guide to French Interiors, Furniture, Decoration, Woodwork Allied Arts - During the Last Half of the Seventeenth Century, the Whole of the Eighteenth Century and the Earlier Part of the Nineteenth #272252

Simon Vouet was born in 1590 and died in 1649. He is regarded as the promoter of the great art movement in France founded on the Renaissance. He visited Italy and studied there the works of some of the great artists, including Paul Veronese, Valentin, and Caravaggio. On his recall to Paris by Louis XIII., in 1627, Vouet became principal painter to the King, and had apartments allotted to him at the Louvre. He was the master of LeBrun, Pierre Mignard, Le Sueur, and many others. While in Italy Louis XIII. had already accorded him a pension. He was for a long time employed on making designs for tapestries. He also gave lessons to the King in crayon drawing. He is regarded as the founder of the French school. As he was one of the designers of tapestries, I have thought it best to show one or two engravings from his works to give some idea of his style. He was a prodigious worker, and a great number of his works have been engraved. They have been published in a work called "Ouvre de Vouet." There is a copy at the Victoria and Albert Museum which appears to have belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds. The designs in it are mostly of religious subjects, and are in a fine, bold, and well-proportioned style. It includes at the end another work of his called "Livre de Diverses Grotesques Peintes dans le Cabinet et Bains de la Reyne Regente au Palais Royal." An eminent writer on decorative art says of Vouet, having no doubt these last designs in his mind: - "He makes for the first time in French Renaissance that abundant use of floral detail in association with more conventional scroll work, which becomes by and by a characteristic of the period of the 'Grand Monarque.' One sees in him, too, the forerunner of Le Pautre and Berain, both of whom he seems to have influenced.