Charles Le Brun, Lithographic Drawings Illustrating the Relation Between the Human Physiognomy and That of the Brute Creation

Charles Le Brun was a French painter, art theorist, interior decorator and a director of several art schools in the 17th century.  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.

Le Brun primarily worked for King Louis XIV, for whom he executed large altar piecies and battle pieces.. His most important paintings are at Versailles. Besides his gigantic labours at Versailles and the Louvre, the number of his works for religious corporations and private patrons is enormous. Le Brun was also a fine portraitist and an excellent draughtsman, but he was not fond of portrait or landscape painting, which he felt to be a mere exercise in developing technical prowess.

What mattered was scholarly composition, whose ultimate goal was to nourish the spirit. The fundamental basis on which the director of the Academy-based his art was unquestionably to make his paintings speak, through a series of symbols, costumes and gestures that allowed him to select for his composition the narrative elements that gave his works a particular depth. For Le Brun, a painting represented a story one could read. Nearly all his compositions have been reproduced by celebrated engravers.

And then there were the delightfully bizarre studies he produced. He lectured on animal and human physiognomy, or facial features, and demonstrated the “signs that identify the natural inclination of men” to eagles, owls, goats, rams, lions, and other animals.