Art Chowder November | December 2016, Issue 6 | Page 47

CHARLES LE BRUN

The Family of Darius The Family of Darius before Alexander

Louis XIV, who commissioned this painting, was

c. 1660, Musée National du Château, Versailles

so pleased with it that he appointed Le Brun First

Photo: Web Gallery of Art

Painter to the King in 1662.

Enter de Piles. For him it was neither authority nor les
anciens (whom he genuinely respected) nor the classical
ideal. It is truth to Nature. Painting isn’t essentially about
representing a story. It is the painting itself and its overall
effect on the viewer that is all-important, whether its subject is a heroic act or flowers in a vase. The goal of painting is the imitation, not of the ancients, but of Nature. The
artist’s task is to create a harmonious unity and balance
among all of a painting’s component parts and aspects,
an effect, for which Color is central, that will immediately engage the attention of the viewer, a response de Piles
calls Enthusiasm. It is a response that occurs at first glance
(au premier coup d’ oeil) and which doesn’t require special
knowledge of art to experience.

experience arising from the pictorial illusion of Nature. As
summed up in the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, “His is the
first theory of formal pictorial composition.” Inherent in
this new way of conceptualizing the nature of painting is
the broader implication that a picture may be appreciated
and evaluated, not only by an elite of learned specialists,
but also by any sensitive and sensible person.

Art lover, theorist, and independent thinker, de Piles was
also a skilled painter, albeit an amateur who didn’t paint
for a living, but was intimately familiar with the painter’s
craft. This brought a valuable dimension to his connoisseur-ship, because he knew the properties of paint, its materials and handling qualities, and could thereby recognize
the unique qualities of an artist’s hand with the brush. One
This was a radical departure from the systematic and rule- of his lesser-known works, The Primary Elements of Practibound ideology of the Academy; the hierarchy of subject cal Painting (1784), is a short instruction manual for beginmatter has been set aside in favor of a purely aesthetic ning painters that demonstrates his profound knowledge
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