Art Chowder November | December 2016, Issue 6 | Page 45

The Meeting of David and Abigail.

Rest on the Flight into

CLAUDE FRANÇOIS
(FRÈRE LUC RECOLLET)

Egypt. 1670-1671

PETER PAUL RUBENS

This was the painting given to de Piles by the Duke of

mille de l’île d’Orléans

Richelieu, from his extensive collection of works by Rubens.

art. Through the Amelot family’s high connections, when in
Rome they were lodged in the Farnese Palace where de Piles
could study the work of Annibale Carracci, Daniele da Volterra, and others. After returning to Paris the following year,
he made the acquaintance of the Duke of Richelieu (Cardinal Richelieu’s nephew), who held him in such esteem as
to give him the gift of Peter Paul Rubens’s David and Abigail. (It has been reported that the Duke of Richelieu lost his
collection of paintings to the king in a wager over a tennis
match. Replacing his collection of Poussins and Carraccis
was by that time out of his financial reach, so he began a
new collection of Rubens’s works, under the advice of de
Piles.) In 1682 Michel Amelot became French Ambassador
to Venice, again accompanied by de Piles as his Secretary,
a position that would last three years and would afford de
Piles plenty of time to familiarize himself with the masterworks of Venetian painting. After this he would be sent on
diplomatic missions of his own, acting as King Louis XIV’s
art adviser and agent for acquiring paintings for the royal
collection, which offered a cover for undertaking secret diplomatic negotiations. In 1692 he traveled to Holland, which
was then at war with France. He went under the pretext of
an art related mission, but in fact it was to seek out persons
who were looking to make peace. It is likely during this trip

TITIAN

1625-1628, Detroit Institute of Arts

Église de la Sainte-Fa-

Virgin and Child with Saints Agnes and John the Baptist
Musée des Beaux-arts, Dijon. It was the critique of this
painting by Philippe de Champaigne that set off the
debate over Drawing and Color.

that he bought a painting from Rembrandt, making him the
first French collector of high standing to have acquired one
of that artist’s works. Unfortunately, he was caught traveling under a forged passport and spent five years in a Dutch
prison. He is thought to have written his Lives of the Painters
(containing over 200 artist biographies and an essay on “The
Perfect Painter”) during that time.
Roger de Piles was also a prolific writer on art, primarily
painting; his influence over the argument about the importance of color or drawing in the art of painting began
to emerge with the appearance of his book On Color (Dialogue sur le Coloris) in 1673. Two years earlier the debate
had been ignited by remarks by Philippe de Champaigne in
a critique of a painting by Titian given at the Royal Academy.

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