Roger de Piles

Engraving by Bernard Picart, 1709

Roger de Piles (born October 7, 1635 in Clamecy , † April 5, 1709 in Paris ) was a French painter , engraver , art critic and diplomat .

biography

The family of Roger de Piles came from the nobility of the Nivernais . He studied philosophy and theology in Nevers , Auxerre and finally in Paris. There he also attended the painting courses of Claude François (called: frère Luc ). In 1662, through the mediation of Gilles Ménage , he became tutor of Michel Amelot, the son of the President of the Grand Council, who gave him access to court circles. Towards the end of the 1660s, he gained a certain reputation for his writings on art. When Michel Amelot became ambassador to Venice in 1682 , he made de Piles his secretary. After his return to France in 1685, Louvois sent him on trips to Germany and Austria . He then accompanied Michel Amelot to Portugal , who had been appointed chief representative. When Amelot was able to obtain the neutrality of the Swiss cantons in 1688 , de Piles signed the contract signed in 1689 and brought it to Louis XIV. In 1692 he was sent to Holland on a diplomatic mission , but was arrested in The Hague and locked up in the Lovenstein fortress for 5 years. After his release in 1697, he resumed his life in Paris.

As a collector of paintings and drawings, he becomes part of the Parisian experts who assess the quality and authenticity of a work. In 1699 he becomes an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Painting . He devotes his last years to writing and painting; he died on April 5, 1709 in Paris. His tomb is in the Saint-Sulpice church .

We only know of his “Portrait de M. de Chénerilles” painted on leather and unsigned or dated, as well as an unsigned and dated etching , which is a reproduction of a portrait by Du Fresnoy after Le Brun . The portrait is exhibited in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire Romain Rolland in Clamecy . Otherwise, his portraits are only known from engravings by famous engravers , made from models by Boileau , Ménage, François Tortebat and a self-portrait.

Art criticism

His most important contribution to the theory of aesthetics is based on his Dialogue sur le coloris , in which he expresses his famous defense of Rubens . In it, de Piles also emphasizes the advantages of drawing and coloring in Titian's work .

Roger de Piles was considered a spokesman for the lay public and supported those artists who opposed the dogmatic academy .

This debate is all the more significant because it an early debate between the classical and the modern in the painting represents. Essentially, it is about the mathematics of proportion and perspective in drawings - the classic approach - as opposed to the colored brushstroke - the modern approach. In his detailed study of the dispute, Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV (1965), Bernard Teyssèdre gives a haunting account of the bohemians , the modern réfusés that were rejected in 17th century Paris; a story that was to repeat itself among the impressionists .

In the course of the argument, Roger de Piles introduces the term “clair-obscur” ( Chiaroscuro ) in order to emphasize the peculiarity of the effect of color, the emphasis on the tension between light and shadow in a picture.

The way Roger de Piles documented his arguments with examples from Venetian and Northern European painters influenced Antoine Coypel , Hyacinthe Rigaud , Nicolas de Largillière and François de Troy .

Balance the artist

Roger de Pile's last published work, Cours de peinture par principes avec un balance de peintres (1708), is about the fair valuation of every artistic achievement, which should be independent of the prevailing art opinion. As an appendix he has attached a table Balance des peintres with 56 most famous painters of his time. Among them are 41 Italians, 7 Flemings, 4 French, 2 German and 2 Dutch, whose works he got to know during his travels. According to his listing, art only begins with Giovanni Bellini , Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci . Living painters of his time do not even appear in it.

Each painter in his table is rated according to quality in four categories, namely in composition, drawing ( disegno ), color and expression. De Piles explains each of these categories below. The composition consists of invention and arrangement. Taste and correctness are part of the drawing. The coloring is to be equated with the color expression. The term, according to de Piles, means less the character than the thoughts of the human heart. The scale is divided into 20 degrees. The maximum value cannot be reached because it means the greatest, unimaginable perfection . 19 points is conceivable, but it is perfection that has not yet been achieved. 18 points stands for a performance close to perfection. The points actually awarded therefore only range from 0 to 18 points. A deficiency in one of the four categories can be compensated for by a plus in another. This gives an overview of the aesthetic appreciation , which depends on the balance between coloring and drawing.

The highest rating went to Raphael and Rubens , with a slight lead in coloring for Rubens and in drawing for Raphael. Raffael achieved the highest rating (18) in drawing and expression and Rubens and Guercino in composition. Giorgione and Tizian achieve 18 points in color . Painters with a low score, with the exception of the color scheme, were Bellini, Palma il Vecchio and Michelangelo Caravaggio , to whom he assigned 16 points in color and 0 points in print. Artists who fell behind Rubens and Raphael, but whose balance between coloring and drawing was perfect, were, according to de Piles, Lucas van Leyden , Guercino, Sébastien Bourdon and Albrecht Dürer . The highest ratings in terms of color are achieved by the Venetians and the Baroque Flemings , from Giorgione and Tizian (18) to Veronese and Tintoretto (16) to Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt (17).

Roger de Piles lists the painters in alphabetical order. At the end of the table there is no sum of the overall quality of the individual artists. He did not want to create a ranking of the artists. He leaves the addition to the reader.

Scoring table

The complete table is given in Manlio Brusatin: Histoire des couleurs (Paris: Flammarion, 1986, pp. 103-104) [2]; reproduced by Elisabeth G. Holt: Literary Sources of Art History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947, pp. 415-416)

Pittore	Composizione	Disegno	Colore	Espressione
Andrea del Sarto	12	16	9	8th
Federico Barocci	14th	15th	6th	10
Jacopo Bassano	6th	8th	17th	0
Giovanni Bellini	4th	6th	14th	0
Sébastien Bourdon	10	8th	8th	4th
Charles Le Brun	16	16	8th	16
I Carracci	15th	17th	13	13
Cavalier d'Arpino	10	10	6th	2
Correggio	13	13	15th	12
Daniele da Volterra	12	15th	5	8th
Abraham van Diepenbeeck	11	10	14th	6th
Il Domenichino	15th	17th	9	17th
Albrecht Dürer	8th	10	10	8th
Giorgione	8th	9	18th	4th
Giovanni da Udine	10	8th	16	3
Giulio Romano	15th	16	4th	14th
Guercino	18th	10	10	4th
Guido Reni	x	13	9	12
Holbein	9	10	16	3
Jacob Jordaens	10	8th	16	6th
Lucas Jordaens	13	12	9	6th
Giovanni Lanfranco	14th	13	10	5
Leonardo da Vinci	15th	16	4th	14th
Lucas van Leyden	8th	6th	6th	4th
Michelangelo	8th	17th	4th	8th
Caravaggio	6th	6th	16	0
Murillo	6th	8th	15th	4th
Otho Venius	13	14th	10	10
Palma il Vecchio	5	6th	16	0
Palma il Giovane	12	9	14th	6th
Il Parmigianino	10	15th	6th	6th
Gianfrancesco Penni	0	15th	8th	0
Perin del Vaga	15th	16	7th	6th
Sebastiano del Piombo	8th	13	16	7th
Primaticcio	15th	14th	7th	10
Raffaello	17th	18th	12	18th
Rembrandt	15th	6th	17th	12
Rubens	18th	13	17th	17th
Francesco Salviati	13	15th	8th	8th
Eustache Le Sueur	15th	15th	4th	15th
Teniers	15th	12	13	6th
Pietro Testa	11	15th	0	6th
Tintoretto	15th	14th	16	4th
Tiziano	12	15th	18th	6th
Van Dyck	15th	10	17th	13
Vanius	15th	15th	12	13
Veronese	15th	10	16	3
Taddeo Zuccari	13	14th	10	9
Federico Zuccari	10	10	8th	8th

Works

• De Arte Graphica (1668) (Translated from Latin into French by Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy - with additional comments by Roger de Piles).
• Dialogue sur le coloris (1673)
• Le Cabinet de Monseigneur le Duc de Richelieu (1676)
• Lettre d'un français à un gentilhomme flamand (1676)
• La Vie de Rubens (1681)
• L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres (1699) (a work in seven volumes with biographies of painters)
• Course de peinture par principes avec un balance de petres (1708)

literature

• Albert Dresdner: The Origin of Art Criticism , Munich 1915.
• Hans Fegers: The political consciousness in the French art theory of the 17th century , Diss. Heidelberg 1937, Mainz 1943.
• Susanne Heiland: La balance des peintres , from: Festschrift Johannes Jahn on the XXII. November MCMLVII, Leipzig 1958, pp. 237-245.
• Léon Mirot: Roger de Piles Peintre, amateur, critique, Membre de l'Académie de Peinture (1635–1709). Jean Schemit, Paris 1924.
• Bernard Teyssèdre: Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV. La bibliothèque des arts, Paris 1965.
• Les Premiers Elemens de la peinture pratique enrichis de figures de proportion mesurees sur l'antique, desinees & gravees par Jean-Baptiste Corneille peintre de l'Academie Royale , Paris, Nicolas Langlois, 1684.
• Abrégé d'Anatomie, accommodé aux Arts de Peinture et de Sculpture, Et mis dans un ordre nouveau, dont la méthode est très-facile, & débarassé de toutes le difficultez & choses inutiles, qui ont toujours esté un grand obstacle aux Peintres pour arriver à la perfection de leur Art par François Tortebat “peintre du Roy dans son Académie Royale de Peinture & de Sculpture”, 1667, Jean Mariette, Paris , 1733, Paris, Chez JB Crepy, 1760, 1765: Bonnard et Jombert. Les gravures, réalisées en 1668, sont des écorchés et des squelettes dans des poses des plus artistiques. " Les figures sont d'après celles que le Titien avoit dessinées pour le Livre de Vésale ..."
• Abregé de la vie des peintres, avec des reflexions sur leurs ouvrages. Seconde édition, revue & corrigée par l'auteur; avec un abregé de sa vie, & plusieurs autres additions , 1699, Paris, Jacques Estienne 1715.
• Cours de Peinture par Principes composé par M. de Piles , Paris: chez Jacques Estienne, 1708, A Amsterdam et à Leipzig, chez Arkstée & Merkus, 1766.
• Recueil de divers ouvrages sur la peinture et le coloris , Paris, 1755 (Cellot & Jombert), Amsterdam 1767 and 1775.
• Éléments de peinture pratique , Amsterdam Leipzig , Arkstee & Merkus, 1776. Célèbre traité de peinture, édition entièrement refondue, & augmentée considérablement par Charles-Antoine Jombert .

Note

• The dispute over the color

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Ministre plénipotentiaire
2. ↑ Musée d'Art et d'Histoire Romain Rolland
3. ↑ Julius von Schlosser: The art literature . 2nd Edition. Anton Schroll & Co., Vienna 1985, p. 556 .