André Félibien
André Félibien (May 1619 – 11 June 1695), sieur des Avaux et de Javercy, was a French chronicler of the arts and official
Biography
Félibien was born at
On his return to France he immediately began working up his notes for the eight volumes of Entretiens he eventually published. He married and was ultimately induced, in the hope of employment and honors, to settle in Paris. Both
Félibien found time in the midst of his official duties for study and research, and produced many literary works. Among these the best and the most generally known is the Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes.[7] That work was directly inspired by Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (first edition, 1550; second edition, 1568). The Entretiens set the nascent discipline of art criticism on sound logical footings, which Félibien set forth most coherently in his Principes de l'architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture, &c. (1676–1690).[2] The Entretiens also served the purpose of advancing the reputations of French artists, sometimes at the expense of artists of other nationalities. An example of this is Félibien's condemnation of Giovanni Bazzi, also known as Il Sodoma, in the Entretiens' fourth volume (1672). Sodoma's mural painting of The Women of Darius' Family before Alexander the Great (c. 1517) was an uncomfortably close source of inspiration for Charles Le Brun's celebrated version of 1660–1661, about which Félibien composed a panegyric entitled Les Reines de Perse aux pieds d'Alexandre (1663). In his biography of "Le Sodoma" in the Entretiens, Félibien made no mention of Sodoma's earlier painting, but devoted the entire biography to a harsh critique of the artist's laziness and immorality, echoing earlier criticisms in Vasari's Lives (second edition, 1568).[8]
Félibien wrote also L'Origine de la peinture (1660), and descriptions of
His son,
Félibien's diaries are among the bound volumes of his papers conserved in the public library of his birthplace, Chartres. The only recent work wholly devoted to Félibien is Stefan Germer, Kunst, Macht, Diskurs. Die intellektuelle Karriere des André Félibien im Frankreich von Louis XIV (Munich), 1997; it supplants the brief report in A. Fontaine, Les doctrines d'art en France (Paris) 1909:41ff.
Art
In 1667 Félibien stated the following views on the hierarchy of genres:[14]
"He who makes perfect landscapes is above another who only paints fruit, flowers, or seashells. He who paints living animals is worthier of estimation than those who paint only things that are dead and without movement. And as the figure of man is the most perfect work of God on earth, it is also certain that he who becomes an imitator of God by painting human figures is much more excellent than all the others. However, even though it is no small thing to make the figure of a man appear as if alive, and to give the appearance of movement to that which has none, nevertheless a painter who only makes portraits...may not pretend to the honor accorded to the most learned. For that, it is necessary to progress from the single figure to the representation of several together, to depict history and myth...the virtue of great men and the most elevated mysteries".
Notes
- ^ He is sometimes credited with being an architect, but no architectural training and no built structures can be ascribed to him.
- ^ a b c d e public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Félibien, André". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 238. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Preface to the Entretiens.
- ^ Vie de Nicolas Poussin was published as the eighth of the Entretiens, (Paris 1688). The Sieur de Chantelou provided him with essential source material. Félibien's sojourn in Rome is the subject of an essay by Y. Delaporte, "André Félibien en Italie," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 51.100 (1958:193ff.
- ^ Claire Pace, Félibien's Life of Poussin (London: Zwemmer 1981).
- ^ Charles Perrault wrote the account of the fête of 1664; Félibien those of 1668 and 1674; they were reissued in glamorous folios with engravings by Jean Le Pautre (Barbara Coeyman, "Social Dance in the 1668 Feste de Versailles: Architecture and Performance Context" Early Music 26.2 (May 1998:264-85) p. 269).
- ^ "Discussions concerning the lives and works of the most excellents painters, ancient and modern" Paris, 1666, fifth ed. 1688; it was republished with several additions at Amsterdam in 1706, and again at Trévoux in 1725.
- .
- ^ Tableaux du Cabinet du Roy, Statues et bustes antiques des Maisons royales (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1677).
- ^ Later editions bore his name (van Helsdingen 1970:109ff).
- ^ Vernon Hyde Minor, Baroque & Rococo: Art & Culture. (New York: Abrams) 1999., pp 209-210.
- ^ With these words H. W. van Helsdingen begins his "Remarks on a Text Borrowed by Félibien" Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 4.2 (1970:109-114) p 109.
- ^ Histoire de labbaye royale de S. Denys en France
- ISBN 978-1588396617. Retrieved 3 August 2019.