PAINTING. 113 
e.g.the windows of the parish church of St. Gervais in Paris. He was 
likewise a sculptor and architect. The artists of those times oon ee | 
selves chiefly in the preparation of cartoons for tapestries, of which fi 
I. was very fond; and to this Gilles Gobelin, by the beautiful and dura 
colors which he succeeded in imparting to the wool, contributed not a little. 
After the death of Primaticcio, the superintendence of the works at Fontaine- 
bleau came into the hands of Ruggieri and the two Frenchmen Du Breuil and 
Jean Bullant, who there represented the exploits of Hercules in twenty-seven 
pictures which they painted together. Jacques Bunel and Du Breuil also 
painted the cupola in the small gallery of the Louvre, which was burnt in 
1660; and Freminet, who took Michael Angelo for his model, painted the 
ceiling of the chapel at Fontainebleau. 
Yet notwithstanding all this, in the times of the Caraccis, when art stood 
in Italy at a high pitch of perfection, French art had hardly attained the 
first stages of its growth, and the magic creations of the Italian pencil seemed 
to excite no rivalry in France. The French works remained mean and dry, 
the drawing was incorrect, the coloring spiritless and without harmony, 
and there was a lack of the fancy and invention which are indispensable for 
the production of a genuine work of art. The first great masters proceeded 
from the school of Simon Vouet; but their successors already manifest a 
decline in skill. Simon Vouet had acquired his artistic education in Rome 
and Venice; and we discern in his pictures the effects of his studies after 
Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. The 
number of this artist’s productions is very great, as he was very industrious, 
and his ambition led him to grasp at everything, in consequence of which 
France lost one of her best artists, Poussin. 
From the school of Vouet there issued many other masters, Lebrun, 
Lesueur, Mignard, Du: Fresnoy, Testelin, and Dorigny pére. His contem- 
poraries were Noél Jouvenet, Percier, Quintin Varin, &c. 
Varin’s school produced Nicolas Poussin (b. 1594, d. 1665), who rose to 
be one of the greatest painters of France. After visiting the schools of the 
most celebrated painters of the time, and finding that he could not derive 
much further advantage from them, he studied and copied the works of the 
great Italians, and at last succeeded by dint of severe economy in getting 
to Rome. Here he studied very diligently and especially the. antique. 
Of all the Italian masters Domenichino became his favorite. His first 
works of importance were the Martyrdom of St. Hramus for the Vatican 
basilica and the celebrated Seven Sacraments for the cavalier Cassiano del 
Pozzo. Several works of Poussin which had come to Paris excited in 
Cardinal Richelieu a desire to have him in that city; and in consequence 
he was summoned in 1639 to Paris, where he was overwhelmed with com- 
missions and was appointed court painter and chief superintendent of all 
artistic undertakings with a salary of 3000 livres. On account of some 
works in the Louvre he fell into a dispute with Fouquier the landscape 
painter and Mercier the architect; and these conspired with Vouet to 
cause Poussin’s overthrow, which at length they effected. Poussin returned 
to Rome, where he painted a great deal, and where he died in 1695. 
ICONOGRAPHIC ENCYCLOPADIA.—VOL. Iv. 82 497 
