Charles Le Brun (1619 - 1690). Charles Le Brun was a French painter, physiognomist, art theorist, and a director of several art schools of his time. As court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him the greatest French artist of all time, he was a dominant figure in 17th-century French art and much influenced by Nicolas Poussin. Born in Paris, Le Brun attracted the notice of Chancellor Séguier, who placed him at the age of eleven in the studio of Simon Vouet. He was also a pupil of François Perrier. At fifteen he received commissions from Cardinal Richelieu, in the execution of which he displayed an ability which obtained the generous commendations of Nicolas Poussin, in whose company Le Brun started for Rome in 1642. In Rome he remained four years in the receipt of a pension due to the liberality of the chancellor. There he worked under Poussin, adapting the latter's theories of art. While in Rome, Le Brun studied ancient Roman sculpture, made copies after Raphael, and absorbed the influence of the local painters. On his return to Paris in 1646, Le Brun found numerous patrons, of whom Superintendent Fouquet was the most important, for whom he painted a large portrait of Anne of Austria. Employed at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Le Brun ingratiated himself with Mazarin, then secretly pitting Colbert against Fouquet. Le Brun was the driving force behind the establishment of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648, and was elected as one of the original twelve elders in charge of its running. He remained a dominant figure at the academy and held the positions of chancellor in 1655, rector from 1668 and director from 1683. When Colbert took control of the institution in 1661, Le Brun was there to assist him in his endeavour to reorganise it with the goal that the academicians would work towards bringing about a theoretical foundation for a national French art. Both also founded the Academy of France at Rome in 1666 as a base for promising young artists who would live and learn there for a certain period on the expense of the crown. Another project Le Brun worked on was Hôtel Lambert. The ceiling in the gallery of Hercules was painted by him. Le Brun started work on the project in 1650, shortly after his return from Italy. The decoration continued intermittently over twelve years or so, as it was interrupted by the renovation of Vaux le Vicomte. In 1660 they established the Gobelins, which at first was a great school for the manufacture, not of tapestries only, but of every class of furniture required in the royal palaces. Commanding the industrial arts through the Gobelins, of which he was director, and the whole artistic world through the Academy, in which he successively held every post, Le Brun imprinted his own character on all that was produced in France during his lifetime. He was the originator of Louis XIV Style and gave a direction to the national tendencies which endured centuries after his death. The artistic output of artists and students from the Gobelins would also exert a strong influence on art elsewhere in Europe. The nature of his emphatic and pompous talent was in harmony with the taste of the king, who, full of admiration of the paintings by Le Brun for his triumphal entry into Paris and his decorations at the Château Vaux le Vicomte, commissioned him to execute a series of subjects from the history of Alexander. The first of these, Alexander and the Family of Darius, so delighted Louis XIV that he at once ennobled Le Brun, who was also created Premier Peintre du Roi with a pension of 12,000 livres, the same amount as he had yearly received in the service of the magnificent Fouquet. The King had declared him the greatest French artist of all time. The Family of Darius, also known as The Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander, was later cut down slightly in size by Le Brun, and retouched to disguise the alteration, presumably to make the painting similar in size to a painting by Paolo Veronese that Louis XIV had acquired. From this date all that was done in the royal palaces was directed by Le Brun. Designs had to be approved of by the king before they could be rendered into paintings or sculptures. In 1663, he became director of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he laid the basis of academicism and became the all-powerful, peerless master of 17th-century French art. It was during this period that he dedicated a series of works to the history of Alexander The Great, and he did not miss the opportunity to make a stronger connection between the magnificence of Alexander and that of the great King.