Portraits in majesty, François de Troy, Nicolas de Largillierre, Hyacinthe Rigaud.
Silvana Editorial| N° d'inventaire | 25742 |
| Format | 24.5 x 28.5 |
| Détails | 296 p., color illustrations, publisher's hardcover. |
| Publication | Milan, 2021 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9788836644209 |
During his reign – the longest in French history – Louis XIV accorded the arts a central role in supporting his political project: architecture, painting, sculpture, music and dance thus benefited from almost unlimited royal patronage. Representing the actors of this golden age, painted portraits particularly flourished, especially from the 1680s onwards, when three artists, competitors but friends, undertook to renew the overly tame model of classical portraiture by infusing it with an unexpected baroque flair.
François de Troy (1645-1730), Nicolas de Largillierre (1656-1746) and Hyacinthe Rigaud (1649-1753) thus revolutionized the syntax of the French portrait and, more generally, of the great European ceremonial portrait. Skilled in constantly varying a very restrictive compositional scheme – that of the basic triangle of the human figure – they gave the genre its letters of nobility by raising it to a level of difficulty of conception and quality of execution at least equal to that of the great history paintings.
Accompanying the exhibition of around a hundred masterpieces, this book studies the practical, theoretical and aesthetic modalities of French portrait art at its peak.
During his reign – the longest in French history – Louis XIV accorded the arts a central role in supporting his political project: architecture, painting, sculpture, music and dance thus benefited from almost unlimited royal patronage. Representing the actors of this golden age, painted portraits particularly flourished, especially from the 1680s onwards, when three artists, competitors but friends, undertook to renew the overly tame model of classical portraiture by infusing it with an unexpected baroque flair.
François de Troy (1645-1730), Nicolas de Largillierre (1656-1746) and Hyacinthe Rigaud (1649-1753) thus revolutionized the syntax of the French portrait and, more generally, of the great European ceremonial portrait. Skilled in constantly varying a very restrictive compositional scheme – that of the basic triangle of the human figure – they gave the genre its letters of nobility by raising it to a level of difficulty of conception and quality of execution at least equal to that of the great history paintings.
Accompanying the exhibition of around a hundred masterpieces, this book studies the practical, theoretical and aesthetic modalities of French portrait art at its peak.