How Did Louis Xiv Use Art as a Tool of the Monarchy?
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THE Arrangement OF THE ARTS
NEVER before or subsequently, excepting possibly nether Pericles, has a government and then stimulated, nourished, or dominated art equally nether Louis Xiv. Richelieu's fine taste and judicious purchases had helped the recovery of French art from the Religious Wars. During the regency of Anne of Austria private collectors-nobles and financiers-had begun to vie with one another in gathering works of art. Pierre Crozat, a banker, had a hundred paintings past Titian, a hundred by Veronese, two hundred by Rubens, over a hundred past Vandyck. Fouquet, as nosotros have seen, amassed paintings, statues, and bottom objects of fine art at Vaux, with more discrimination than discretion. Louis, destroying him, inherited his acquisitions; and in time several other private collections were gathered into the Louvre or Versailles. Mazarin had put part of his hoard into fine art more than likely than money to escape depreciation. His fine Italian sense of taste shared in forming the classical bias of the Rex, and it was probably he who taught Louis XIV that information technology redounded to the celebrity of a ruler to accrue, display, and foster fine art. These collections provided the stimulating exemplars and stabilizing norms for art teaching and development in France.
Investing in the arts Colbert and Mazarin
The next step was to organize the artists. Here besides Mazarin led the manner. In 1648 he founded the Academie de Peinture et de Sculpture; in 1655 this received a charter from the King, and became the first in a series of academies designed to train artists and direct them into the service and adornment of the country. Colbert took up where Mazarin left off, and brought to a caput this centralization of French art. Though himself laying no claim to creative judgment, he aspired "to make the arts flourish better in France than anywhere else." He began by ownership for the King the tapestry works of the Gobelins (1662). In 1664 he acquired the mail service of superintendent of buildings, . which gave him control of architecture and its ancillary arts. In that yr he reorganized the University of Painting and Sculpnlre every bit the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Henry IV had housed in the Louvre a guild of artisans to beautify the royal palaces; Coibert made these men the nucleus of the Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne-the Royal Mill of Piece of furniture for the Crown (1667). In 1671 he established the Academie Royale de 50' Compages, where artists were induced to build and decorate in Ie bon gout canonical by the Rex. In all these societies the artisans were brought nether the direction of artists, and these under the guidance of 1 policy and manner.
Transporting the glory of the Roman emperors to the Rex and capital of France
To reinforce the classical bent that French art had received nether Francis I, and cleanse it from Flemish influences, Colbert and Charles Le Brun set up upwards in Rome the Academie Royale de French republic (1666). Students who had won the Prix de Rome in the Paris academies were sent to Italy, and were
maintained there for five years at the expense of the French government. They were required to ascent at five o'clock in the morn and to retire at ten o'clock at night; they were trained in copying and imitating classical and Renaissance models; they were expected to produce a "masterpiece" (in the guild sense) every three months; and when they returned to France the state had first option on their services. The result of this fostering and nationalization of art was an impressive, overwhelming production of palaces, churches, statues, pictures, tapestries, pottery, medallions, engravings, and coins, all stamped with the pride and gustation-often with the features-of Le Roi Solei!. It was not a subjection of French art to Rome, as some complained; information technology was a subjection of Roman art to Louis Xiv. The style aimed to be classical, for that mode agreed with the majesty of states and kings. Colbert poured French money into Italian republic to purchase classical or Renaissance art. Everything was done to transport the glory of the Roman emperors to the King and capital of France. The result
amazed the world.
He gave greater encouragement to the arts than all his fellow kings together
Louis XIV became the greatest patron of art that history has known. He "gave greater encouragement to the arts" (in the judgment of Voltaire) "than all his swain kings together."! He was, of course, the most openhanded collector. He enlarged the number of paintings in his galleries from two hundred to twenty-five hundred; and many of these pictures were the product of royal commissions to French artists. He bought so many pieces of classical or Renaissance sculpture that Italy feared creative denudation, and the Pope forbade the further export of art. Louis engaged men of talent like Girardon or Coysevox to make copies of statues that he could non buy; and seldom accept copies so rivaled their originals. The palaces, gardens, and parks of Paris, Versailles, and Marly were peopled with bronze. The surest way to the King's favor was to present him with a piece of work of unquestioned beauty or established repute; so the city of Aries gave him its famous Venus in 1683. Louis was not stingy; each twelvemonth, in Voltaire's estimate, he bought French fine art products to the value of 800,000 livres, and fabricated gifts of them to cities, institutions, and friends, aiming at once to back up the artists and to disseminate a sense of dazzler and a feeling for art. The gustation of the King was skilful, and immensely benefited French art, just it was narrowly classical. When he was shown some paintings by the younger Teniers he commanded, "Elllevez-moi ces grotesques! Take away these crudities!" Under his favor artists rose considerably in earnings and social status. He gave the cue by personally honoring them; and when someone complained of the patents of nobility that he conferred on the painter Le Brun and the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansard, he replied, with some warmth, "I can make xx dukes or peers in a quarter of an 60 minutes, just it takes centuries to make
a Mansard." Mansard was paid lxxx chiliad livres per year; Le Brun reveled in the opulence of his mansions at Paris, Versailles, and Montmorency; Largilliere and Rigaud received six hundred livres per portrait. "No artist of worth was left in poverty."
The new Office of the Cities in the Age of Louis Fourteen
In honoring and rewarding fine art the provinces emulated the capital" and nobles followed the lead of the King. The cities adult art schools of their ain-at Rouen, Beauvais, Blois, Orleans, Tours, Lyons, Aix-enProvence, Toulouse, Bordeaux. The function of the nobles equally patrons diminished equally [he country absorbed the available talent, but it connected; and the trained taste of the most adult aristocracy in Europe contributed to establish the exquisite manner of art productions nether Louis XIV. Men and women born to privilege and wealth, and reared in skilful manners amid handsome surroundings and objects of dazzler, acquired standards and tastes from their elders and their environment; and the artists had to meet those standards and satisfy those tastes. As moderation, self-restraint, elegant expression, svelte movement, and polished form were ideals of the French aristocracy in this age, it demanded these qualities in art; the social construction favored the classic style. Art profited from these influences and controls, but it paid a price. It lost impact with the people, information technology could not express them as Dutch and Flemish art expressed kingdom of the netherlands; it became the vocalization non of the nation simply of a course, the state, and the King. We shall not notice in the art of this menstruum much warmth or depth of feeling, not the rich tints and arable flesh of Rubens, nor the profound shadows enveloping Rembrandt'southward rabbis, saints, and financiers; we shall see no peasants, no workers, no beggars, merely only the pretty happiness of the top of the world.
Charles Le Brun and Sebastien Bourdon
To the joy of Colbert and his master, they found in Charles Le Brun a human who could be at once a zealous retainer of the regime and a dominating magistrate of this classic way. In [666, on Colbert's recommendation, Le Brun was made principal painter to the Rex, and director of the Academie des Beaux-Arts; a year afterwards he was put in charge of the Gobelin manufacturing plant. He was commissioned to superintend the education and operation of artists, with a view to developing in their products a harmony of style distinctive and representative of the reign. 'Vith the assistance of likeminded subordinates Le Beun established in the Academy lecntres, by which the principles of the classic style were inculcated with precepts, examples, and authority. Raphael among the italians,
Poussin among the French, were the favored models; every painting was judged by the canons derived from their art. Le Brun and Sebastien Bourdon formulated these rules; they exalted line to a higher place color, discipline above originality, guild above freedom; the task of the creative person was not to
copy Nature bur to brand her beautiful, not to mirror her disorder, imperfections, and monstrosities besides as her incidental loveliness, but to select those features of her that would enable the soul of human being to express its deepest feelings and highest ideals. The architects, the painters, the sculptors,
the potters, the woodworkers, the metalworkers, the glassworkers, the engravers were to utter with 1 harmonious voice the aspirations of French republic and the grandeur of the King.
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Source: https://about-history.com/louis-xiv-greatest-patron-of-art-that-history-has-known/
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