, one of the best painters hi his time which the French nation had
, one of the best painters hi his
time which the French nation had produced, was born at
Paris in 1617, and studied the principles of his art under
Simon Vouet, whom he infinitely surpassed; and although
he was never out of France, carried the art to a very
high degree of perfection. His style was formed upon
antiquity, and after the best Italian masters. He invented
with ease, and his execution was always worthy of his designs. His attitudes are simple and noble, and his ex r
pression well adapted to the subject. His draperies are
designed after the manner of Raphael’s last works. Although he knew little of the local colours, or the chiaro
scuro, he was so much master of the other parts of painting, that there was a great likelihood of his throwing off
Vuuet’s manner entirely, had he lived longer. Immediately aiter Vouet’s death, he perceived that his master had
led him out of the way: and by considering the antiques
that were in France, and the designs and prints of the best
Italian masters, particularly Raphael, he contracted a more
refined style and happier manner. Le Brun could not
forbear being jealous of Le Sueur, who did not mean,
however, to give any man pain; for he had great simplicity of manners, and much candour, and probity. He
died at Paris April 30, 1655, at no more than thirty-eight
years of age. The life of St. Bruno, in twenty pictures,
originally preserved in the Chartreux, and which employed
him for three years, have, as Mr. Fuseli informs us, been
“lately consigned to the profane clutch of restoration in
the attic of the Luxembourg, and are now little more than
the faint traces of what they were when issuing from the
hand of their master. They have suffered martyrdom more
than once.It is well that the nature of the subject permitted little more than fresco in the colouring at first, and
that the great merit of their execution consisted in that
breadth of vehicle which monastic drapery demands, else
we should have lost even the fragments that remain.‘ The
old man in the fore-ground, the head of St. Bruno, and
some of the disputants in the back-ground of the Predication; the bishop and the condemned defunct in the funeral; the apparition of St. Bruno himself in the camp; the
female figure in the eleemosinary scene, and what has suffered least of all, the death of St. Bruno, contain the least
disputable marks of the master’s primitive touch. The
subject of the whole, abstractly considered, is the personification of sanctity, and it has been represented in the
series with a purity which seems to place the artist’s heart
on a level with that of his hero. The simplicity which tells
that tale of resignation and innocence, despises all contrast
of more varied composition, though not always with equal
success, St. Bruno on his bed, visited by angels, building or viewing the plan for building his rocky retreat; the
hunting-scene, and’ the apotheosis; might probably have
admitted happier combinations. As, in the different re*
touchings, the faces have suffered most, the expression
must be estimated by those that escaped; and from what
still remains, we may conclude that it was not inferior to
the composition.
”