811 



SUEUR, EUSTACHE LE. 



SUICER, JOHN GASPAR. 



812 



into English by Philemon Holland, fol., London, 1606; and there are 

 four or five other English translations. There are French, Dutch, 

 German, Danish, Italian, and Spanish translations. There is also 

 extant a small treatise ' On Distinguished Grammarians' by Suetonius; 

 and another ' On Distinguished Rhetoricians,' consisting at present of 

 only six chapters. Neither of these works is included in the catalogue 

 of Suidas, unless they belonged to the work ' On the Stemrna of 

 Illustrious Romans,' which however, if we may judge from its title, 

 would be a different kind of work. It has been conjectured that they 

 formed part of a work ' De Viris Illustribus ' (not the work extant 

 under that title, which belongs to Aurelius Victor), on the model of 

 which, Jerome says, in an epistle to Desiderius, that he himself wrote 

 a treatise. There are also extant the following Lives by Suetonius : 

 the Lives of Terence, Juvenal, Persius, Horace, Lucan, and the elder 

 Pliny ; the last is only a few lines. These Lives are conjectured to 

 have been part of a larger work ' On Poets.' But the Life of the 

 elder Pliny would not properly belong to such a treatise. 



SUEUR, EUSTACHE LE, one of the most celebrated of the 

 French painters, was born in 1617. His father was an obscure sculptor 

 of Mont Didier. After he had learnt from his father the first rudi- 

 ments of design, he was placed in the school of Simon Vouet at Paris, 

 then very famous, where he was the fellow-scholar of Le Brun and 

 Mignard. Le Sueur soon surpassed his master, and forsook his man- 

 ner, and by assiduously studying the antique, and some of Raffaelle's 

 pictures and the prints after him by Marcantonio, he adopted a style, 

 which for its simplicity and severity contrasted greatly with that of 

 Vouet and the French school of the time, and at length placed the 

 name of Le Sueur above that of any of his rivals. He has been 

 termed by his admirers the French Raffaelle ; but he was far behind 

 that great master in every respect. 



The celebrated series of St. Bruno, of twenty-two large pictures, 

 painted on wood, in the cloister of the Carthusians at Paris, was 

 executed by Le Sueur before his thirtieth year; he completed it in 

 three years, and was assisted only by his brother-iu-law and scholar 

 Gousse, or Goulai, in the figures, and by Patel in the landscapes. In 

 1766 these pictures were transferred to canvas, and are now in the 

 Louvre. The character and the composition of several of them are 

 very pleasing, but in chiaroscuro they are very indifferent, and the 

 colouring is monotonous : they have been engraved by Chauveau and 

 Le Clerc. In his thirty-second year, in 1649, he painted his celebrated 

 picture of St. Paul preaching at Ephesus, and the Gentiles burning 

 their proscribed Books, for the guild of the goldsmiths, to be presented 

 to the cathedral of Notre Dame ; it is a grand composition of many 

 figures, the heads and the draperies are much in the style of Raffaelle ; 

 it has been engraved by Stephen Picart and R. U. Massard. Paul 

 Healing the Sick, engraved by Bauzo and the elder Massard, and the 

 Martyrdoms of St. Laurence and of St. Protais, both engraved by 

 Gerard Audran, are also compositions, conspicuous for their simplicity 

 aud severity. Le Sueur painted many other celebrated pictures, as, 

 Christ scourged; Christ with Martha aud Mary ; and the Presentation 

 in the Temple ; the histories of St. Martin and St. Benedict : and 

 others all of which have been engraved by the best French artists. 

 His most extensive works however, by some considered his best, and 

 which occupied him the last nine years of his life, were the mytholo- 

 gical paintings of the Hotel du Chatelet, executed for the President 

 Lambert de Thorigny; they were removed to the Louvre in 1795. 

 The palace was decorated by Le Sueur and Le Brun conjointly ; three 

 apartments were painted by Le Sueur, the ' Salon de T Amour," the 

 ' Cabinet des Muses,' and ' 1'Appartment des Bains.' In these paint- 

 ings Le Sueur has still adhered to his great model, and has imitated 

 the style of the celebrated series of the story of Cupid and Psyche, 

 painted by Raffaelle, in the Farnesina at Rome. In the first apart- 

 ment, ho painted several beautiful compositions from the life of 

 Cupid ; iu the second, the Muses, and a grand composition of many 

 figures, of Phscton entreating Apollo to allow him to drive the chariot 

 of the Sun ; in the third, Diana, surprised by Actseon, Diana detecting 

 the pregnancy of Calisto, and the triumphs of Neptune and of Amphi- 

 trite. These works have been universally preferred to those of Le 

 Brun ; they have been engraved by Bernard Picart and others, in 

 nineteen plates, and were published in Paris, in 1640, in folio, under 

 the title ' Lea Peintures de Charles Le Brun et d'Eustache le Sueur 

 qui sont dans 1'Hotel du Chaatelet, cy devant la Maison du President 

 Lambert, dessindes par Bernard Picart, et gravies tant par lui quo par 

 diffe"rens Graveurs.' 



In 1655 Le Sueur's labours were terminated by his death, in the 

 thirty-eighth year of his age ; a constant excitement and an excessive 

 application proved too much for a constitution naturally weak. 

 Though he is reported to have been of a gentle and an amiable dis- 

 position, he had many enemies, but the report of his having been 

 poisoned is without foundation. That Le Sueur's great talents en- 

 gendered an active jealousy among his rivals, is generally allowed, 

 especially upon the part of Le Brun, who is said to have openly 

 expressed his satisfaction at the death of Le Sueur, saying, that he 

 had been relieved of a great thorn from his foot. It cannot be 

 doubted, that if Le Sueur had lived, the rising influence of Le Brun 

 would have been seriously checked, and the French school of painting 

 might Lave taken ultimately a totally different course from that which 

 it pursued from the time of Louis XIV. until the last quarter of a 



century. Le Sueur never left Paris. He married very young, and 

 being very badly paid for his works, he never had the means of 

 travelling, or improving his taste by visiting Italy and studying the 

 great works of its famous schools. The defects of his style are, a 

 deficiency in a thorough mastery of the naked figure, a feeble chiar- 

 oscuro, and a heavy and monotonous tone of colouring; some of his 

 figures also want life, and appear to want purpose ; in composition 

 however, in character, and in the casting of- draperies, he has seldom 

 been surpassed ; qualities foremost among the properties requisite to 

 constitute a great painter. 



When the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts was established in Paris, 

 in 1648, Le Sueur was appointed one of the twelve ancients or pro- 

 fessors ; he had baen previously elected a member of the Academy of 

 St. Luke at Rome. His style had little influence upon the arts in 

 Paris ; his only scholars were his three brothers, Pierre, Philippe, and 

 Antoine Le Sueur, Le Fevre, and Nicolas Colombel. His own portrait, 

 painted by himself, has been engraved by C. N. Cochin. In Landon's 

 ' Ouvres de Le Sueur' there are 110 prints from his works. 



(Felibien, Entretiens sur les Ouvragea des plus excettens Peinlres, &c.; 

 D'Argenville, Abrege de la Vie des 'plus fameux Peintres ; Re" veil and 

 Duchesne, Musee de Peinture et de Sculpture.) 



SUHM, PETER FREDERIK, one of the most learned and indus- 

 trious writers that Denmark has produced, was the son of Admiral 

 Suhm, and was born at Copenhagen on the 18th of October 1728. 

 Such was liis extraordinary application to study, that he is said to 

 have read not only the chief classic authors but other works to the 

 amount of fifteen hundred volumes, in his father's library at Plessen, 

 when he was not more than sixteen a report no doubt greatly- 

 exaggerated. In 1746 he entered the university of Copenhagen, and, 

 in compliance with his father's wishes, studied jurisprudence ; but 

 though he received, two years afterwards, an appointment in the 

 supreme court of justice at Copenhagen, and though the most brilliant 

 career both at the bar and in public affairs opened itself to him, he 

 soon renounced it, devoting himself entirely to his literary pursuits, 

 more especially to the study of northern history and antiquities, In 

 order to acquire authentic information and materials relative to these 

 subjects, he not only visited Norway in 1751, but remained there till 

 1765, when he returned to Copenhagen, where he continued to reside 

 until his death. 



Shortly after his return he began to publish the fruits of his laborious 

 researches in a succession of historical Woi-ka, all relating to northern 

 and Gothic annals, mythology, and archaeology, and no less remarkable 

 for the vast erudition displayed in them than for the prodigious 

 literary industry of which they are a monument. One of the moeit 

 valuable of them is that entitled ' Odin, or the Mythology of Northern 

 Paganism,' 1771. His 'Critical History of Denmark,' 4 vols. 4to, 

 1774-81, and his 'History of Denmark,' 7 vols., 1782, &c., likewise 

 afford a mass of information relative to the more obscure periods and 

 antiquities of that and the other countries of Scandinavia. His 

 industry with his own pen was equalled only by the munificence with 

 which he patronised similar undertakings. He caused, for instance, 

 the last two volumes of the 'Scriptores Rerum Danicarum' to be 

 printed at his own expense; and bore the cost of publishing the 

 Islandic ' Landnamabok,' &c., and the edition of the ' Auuales Abul- 

 fedse,' by Adler, 5 vols., 1789-94. 



In addition to his various and vast labours as an historian, Suhm 

 distinguished himself also in several other branches of literature, 

 including poetry. His ' Idyls,' indeed, although not without merit, 

 have little interest at the present day ; but his prose ' Tales,' founded 

 upon northern legends and traditions, are deservedly popular. These 

 and his other miscellaneous productions form the collection of his 

 'Samlade Skrifter,' in 16 vols., 1788-99. 



Suhm not only formed at great expense a most valuable collection 

 of books, amounting to upwards of 100,000 volumes, but freely opened 

 it to the public, librarians aud attendants being kept by him for that 

 purpose; and he continued to augment it appropriating to that 

 purpose the yearly sum of 5000 dollars until he consented that it 

 should be incorporated with the royal library in 1796, on conditions 

 which sufficiently attest that noble-minded disinterestedness which, 

 after literary enthusiasm, formed the leading trait of his character. 

 His death, which was occasioned by gout,,took place September 7th, 

 1798. 



SUICER (SCHWEITZER), JOHN" GASPAR, or CASPAR, was 

 born at Zurich in. 1620, and after studying at Montauban, returned to 

 Switzerland, and became the pastor of a country commune in 1643. 

 In 1660 he became professor of Hebrew and Greek in the University 

 of Zurich, and devoted himself especially to the study of the Greek 

 fathers. He resigned his chair in 1683, and died on the 29th of 

 December 1684. 



His chief work, the reputation of which is still great, was his 

 'Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, e Patribus Grsecis, ordine alphabetico, 

 exhibens qusecunque Phrases, Ritus, Dogmata, Haereses, et hujus- 

 modi alia hue spectant,' 2 vols. fol., Amst., 1632 ; best edition, 2 vols. 

 foL, Amst, 1728, with a supplement by his son. He is said to have 

 been engaged upon this work for twenty years. 



Suicer wrote three other works, on the Nicene Creed and other 

 points of Oriental Church history, besides a Greek Syntax, and a Greek 

 and Latin Lexicon. 



