Portrait de Louvois
Robert Nanteuil (Reims, 1623-Paris, 1678)
Portrait of François-Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois
1677
Burin
Ancienne collection Roland de Perthuis.
Paris, galerie Paul Prouté
This last portrait represents François-Michel Le Tellier de Louvois, minister of Louis XIV and a major reformer of the army. In 1683, on the death of Minister Colbert, his lifelong enemy, Louvois became superintendent of the King’s Buildings, Arts and Manufactures. In this post he supervised the weaving of the Moses tapestry, which is thought to have begun that same year at the Gobelins tapestry works.
The beginning of the work on the tapestry had been held up by several setbacks. After postponing the start of the weaving, Colbert finally changed his mind at the very beginning of the 1680s. So it was he who was behind this royal commission, but it was with the appointment of Louvois that the pieces of the Moses began to "come down from the loom"...
These changes of mind were the result of a fundamental artistic polemic at the end of the 17th century: the argument between the Ancients and Moderns. This polemic arose at the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, where there was a rift between two opposing currents: the "Poussinistes", followers of Poussin who favoured the rationality of drawing and the "Rubenistes", followers of Rubens who promoted the importance of colour. The History of Moses can be considered as one of the aesthetic victories of the Poussinistes.
