Jean Bérain the Elder

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Jean Bérain the Elder

Jean Bérain the Elder (born June 14, 1640 in Saint-Mihiel , today's Meuse department , † January 24, 1711 in Paris ) was a versatile French painter , draftsman and engraver , who was the royal chamber and cabinet draftsman (1674) of Louis XIV. Executed ornament and decoration paintings and drafts for furniture and goldsmith work as well as cardboard for picture knittingcreated. As a decorator of court celebrations and performances, he designed sets and theatrical costumes and invented stage machinery .

He was one of the leading representatives of the classicist Baroque style , for which the technical term Louis-quatorze style is used in the areas of interior decoration and furniture art .

Life

Jean Bérain came from a Lorraine family of gunsmiths and at the age of 19 he published a book entitled Diverses pièces utiles pour les arquebusiers (German: Diverse parts useful for arquebusiers ).

Instructed in painting by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), who became the first court painter to Louis XIV in 1662, he counted - together with the painters of about the same age Charles de Lafosse (1640–1716) and Jean Jouvenet (1644–1717) - to its most talented students in this age group.

In addition to Henri Gissey († 1673), Bérain designed the costumes for the great parades of the so-called Carrousels of 1662 , one of Louis XIV after his actual takeover (1661) in the courtyard of the Tuileries Palace with the help of around 500 noble horsemen and their companions for around 15,000 guests organized the festivities.

Since 1674, following Henri Gissey as dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi in courtly services, Jean Bérain staged other carrousels , numerous ceremonies , festivals, masquerades , balls , theater , ballet and opera performances and others divertissements . Like many court artists, he was given an apartment in the Palais du Louvre .

In 1680 he succeeded Carlo Vigarani (1637-1713) as the official decorator of the Académie royale de musique .

Jean Bérain died in Paris in 1711 at the age of over 70.

His atelier was taken over by his son Jean Bérain the Younger (1674–1726). His work was published after his death by his son-in-law, the royal watchmaker Jacques Thuret .

plant

A large part of the life's work of Jean Bérain the Elder consisted of magnificent, ephemeral decorations, costumes and machineries, for which he was praised as a tasteful, imaginative and resourceful artist. Only drafts and the numerous subsequent etchings , some of which were published by Bérain himself, have survived . These were brought into circulation by engravers and art dealers based in Paris' rue Saint-Jacques such as Claude-Auguste Berey , Pierre-Jean Mariette and the brothers Jean and Nicolas Bonnard . The Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Musée des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon in Versailles and the Musée Condé in Chantilly have original drawings, and another very remarkable collection is in the National Museum in Stockholm .

Among the theatrical productions for which Bérain invented complicated machinery, the spectacular scenes of the eruption of the Etna volcano in the Prospérine (1680) and Neptune rising out of the floods in Phaëton (1683) were remembered, but especially the final scene with the fear and dizzying crash of the sun chariot driven by Phaëton into a raging sea.

In 1688, Monseigneur le Prince , Henri-Jules de Condé , son of the Grand Condé , turned to Bérain while planning the reception he invited Monseigneur , the Grand Dauphin , to his castle in Chantilly on August 29th that event transformed part of Jules Hardouin-Mansart's orangery into a theater for the performance of Jean-Louis Lully's musical drama Orontée .

Berain drew a completely different, less theatrical, much more subtle register in his characteristic designs for furniture, goldsmith's work and pictorial work. They are characterized by a departure from the heavy, pompous Baroque style and the adoption of the grotesques from the Renaissance , which the decorative artist transformed into airy arabesques . These delicate, refined tendril ornaments, intertwined with ribbon motifs and therefore also referred to as ribbon work , are one of the features of his cardboard boxes for the Manufacture de Tapisseries de Beauvais, founded in 1664 . However, Bérain used them in all areas of room decoration. Their imaginative, cheerful motifs and their slim, elegant lines already indicate the style of the Regency .

The style of decoration coined by the artist and named after him, the Berain style , had a notable influence in Holland, England and Germany. In France it was used, among other things, in the later productions of the porcelain factories of Sèvres and Limoges .

Factory selection

Theater decorations, costumes for carrousels and theater performances, machineries:

  • 1662: Costume designs for the Carrousel from 1662 in the courtyard of the Tuileries Palace for Louis XIV
  • 1674: Decor for the musical drama Alceste by Jean-Baptiste Lully [1]
  • 1675: Decor and costume designs for the musical drama Thésée by Jean-Baptiste Lully, performed at the Académie royale de musique
  • 1671: Costume designs for the ballet Le triomphe de l'amour, which premiered at the court in Versailles
  • 1680: Decor and costume designs for the musical drama Prospérine by Jean-Baptiste Lully, which premiered in Saint-Germain-en-Laye Castle ; Original drawings in Stockholm, National Museum, Carl Gustaf Tessin collection
  • 1683: Costume designs for the musical drama Phaëton , premiered in January in the Manege der Grands écuries in Versailles , décor and machinery for the following performances from March onwards at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal
  • 1685: Costume designs for the Carrousel des Galants Maures held in Versailles, including those of the Grand Dauphin and his Quadrille, the Dukes of Bourbon, of Gramont, etc.
  • 1688: Theater in the orangery of Chantilly Castle for the performance of the musical drama Orontée by Jean-Louis Lully
  • 1690: Decor and costume designs for the musical drama Enée et Lavinie by Pascal Collasse, performed at the Académie royale de musique

Cardboard boxes for picture knitting:

  • Six boxes for the Trophés Marins ; A copy of the six- piece wall hanging that the Manufacture de Tapisseries de Beauvais made from these boxes is in the Musée du Louvre in Paris .

Arrangement of the mirror gallery in the Palace of Versailles for the reception of the envoy from Siam (1686):

  • 1686: La Galerie des Glaces avec le trône et le mobilier d'argent, aménagement pour l'ambassadeur du Siam en 1686 , after Bérain, etched by Dolivart, Versailles, Palace of Versailles [2]

Others:

  • 1688: Dessein de la colation qui fut donné à Monseigneur le Prince dans le milieu du labirinte à Chantilly le 29 Aoust 1688 , after Bérain etched by Dolivart in Mercure , September 1688

literature

  • Jérôme de la Gorce: Bérain, dessinateur du Roi Soleil , Herscher, Paris 1986
  • Alfred Marie: Les salles du château de Chantilly in Revue d'histoire du théâtre n ° III / IV, 1955, pp. 298–305
  • Jacques Thuret: Oeuvre de Jean Bérain , Paris 1711, reprint Paris 1887
  • Roger-Armand Weigert : Jean I Bérain, dessinateur de la chambre du cabinet du Roi: 1640-1711. Sa vie, sa famille, son style. L'oeuvre gravé , 2 volumes, Les édition d'art et d'histoire, Paris, 1937
  • Roger-Armand Weigert: Le décor Bérain , catalog of the exhibition in the Musée des tapisseries in Aix-en-Provence, published by F. Chauvet, Aix-en-Provence 1954
  • Roger-Armand Weigert: La tenture des triomphes marins d'après Jean I Bérain in Gazette des Beaux-Arts , N ° Mai-Juin 1937,

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ According to other sources, he is said to have been born on October 28, 1637.
  2. ↑ June 5 and 6, 1662
  3. ↑ See Pierre-Jean Mariette: Abecedario , reprint Ph. De Chennvières, A. de Montaiglon (ed.), Dumoulin, Paris 1853-1854, Volume 2, p. 313
  4. ↑ Cf. Claude Parfaict: Dictionnaire des Théâtres de Paris , Rozet, 1767
  5. ↑ The Manufacture de Tapisseries de Beauvais still exists today. It has been housed in the Paris tapestry manufactory since 1935
personal data
SURNAME Bérain, Jean the Elder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter, draftsman and engraver
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1637 or June 14, 1640
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Mihiel , Duchy of Lorraine , Holy Roman Empire
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1711
Place of death Paris , France