Word: bruns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Louis branded the age with his name. He was, after all, the arbiter of its fashions, the patron of its arts, the instigator of its wars. He was the Sun King, and Le Brun painted him as a god on the vaults of Versailles...
...setting could not be more appropriate; Le Brun's long career winged toward Versailles like an arrow to the bull's-eye. Son of a sculptor, he is said to have made sketches in his cradle. When he was not yet 15, he won the patronage of Chancellor Pierre Séguier (see color), who later sent him to Rome to study with the expatriate classicist Poussin. Le Brun was solidly attached to the papal court of the Barberini family, and after the Pamphilis took over, he headed back to France. Plunging into the Parisian artistic establishment...
Convenient Deaths. Fortune and a delicate skill in personnel placement did wonders for his position: both his teacher, Vouet, whom he was to replace as dean of Parisian artists, and an early rival, Eustache Le Sueur, conveniently died. Sighed Le Brun: "Death has relieved me of a thorn in the foot." Astutely, he promoted a French Academy in Rome, and with characteristic magnanimity dispatched his chief surviving Paris rival, Charles Errard, to be its rector...
Louis XIV granted Le Brun the articles of nobility in 1662, and the road to Versailles was open. The King put Le Brun in charge of redecorating the Gallery of Apollo at the Louvre after the fire of 1661, then appointed him to decorate the great Versailles complex. The artist spent a decade designing the palace interiors, decorating the Hall of Mirrors and the Galleries of War and of Peace, planning the garden statuary and constructing the stairways. Tirelessly, he decorated the famous pavilions and chateau of Louis' Bismarckian minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, at the Parisian suburb of Sceaux...
Even Locks & Bolts. Le Brun's artistic dictatorship was centered in the workshops of the Gobelins, where he directed the manufacture of tapestries, furniture, sculpture, mosaics, wood inlay-even locks and bolts. The style is called "Louis Quatorze," but it might as well be "Charles Le Brun"; seldom has a single man so completely shaped the look of his age. His best paintings were perfectly drawn and meticulously detailed scenes of grand battles and formal parades, but he was also a consummate portraitist with a little-used gift for capturing the nuances of feeling...