JEAN MORIN
1600-1666
ByLOUIS R. METCALFE
THE Exhibitions of French Engraved Portraits of the Seventeenth Century recently made at the New York Public Library and at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, give one an excellent idea of the vogue of the portrait and the excellence attained by that remarkable school of engravers which flourished under the auspices of Louis XIV. A score of masters are represented, from Michael Lasne to the superb Nanteuil, and their models, the most representative personages of that grand century of French history, whether plotters against Henry IV, friends and foes of Richelieu or flatterers of Louis XIV, stand proudly on parade for the twentieth-century American, in all their glory of immense wigs, armor and lace collars, or in the quieter garb of prelates and counselors to the king. It is a remarkable illustration to the history of a great period. The nobility represented the survival of the fittest, for in the early part of the century four thousand of them had died in those street duels which Richelieu had abolished only with the help of the executioner. As to the clergy, no wonder that so many of those portly prelates could afford to have their portraits paintedand engraved: the wealth of the church had never been greater. Their example was followed by every one of any importance in the public eye; he had his portrait made with no more hesitation than one has nowadays to sit to a photographer of recognized excellence.
It was the Golden Age of Portrait-painting, for they were the days of Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and that host of splendid Dutch artists for whom physiognomy had no secrets. They in turn inspired Philippe de Champaigne and, later, Lebrun and Mignard, Rigaud and Largillière. Many of their glorious canvases have long been public property and remain to-day enshrined in national museums, but many more have for years remained jealously guarded heirlooms in private collections, and have been known only to a few. Many of those which have not been destroyed have become so altered by time and damaged by faulty restoration that they hardly do justice to their creators.
Thanks to the engraver, these portraits are just as alive to-day as when they were painted, for in an engraving there is no paint to fade or darken, no values to become altered. A brilliant impression of an early state remains to-day what it was when it emerged from the master’s hand two and a half centuries ago. Such collections as are now exhibited represent more than brilliant examples of an art which is lost; they are historical and artistic documents of great importance, and the French Engravers of the Seventeenth Century deserve infinite praise for having showed all the possibilities of an art which, as Longhi claims in his bookLa Calcografia, “publishes and immortalizesthe portraits of eminent men for the example of present and future generations, better than any other serving as the vehicle for the most extended and remote propagation of deserved celebrity.”
Among the many artists who were responsible for the Golden Age of Engraving, Jean Morin occupies a unique position. He was born in 1600 and died in 1666. Morin has the distinction of having not only immediately preceded and influenced the master of them all, Nanteuil, but also of having produced fifty portraits which, in contradistinction to all other reproductive engravers, he etched instead of engraved with the burin. It is difficult, however, to realize what a strikingly original and personal artist he was, without first considering in what stage of development his first efforts had found the art.
When had engraved portraiture begun in France? We must look for its first steps in the illustrations of the books which were published during the second half of the sixteenth century; they teem with carefully executed small-sized portraits which, as a rule, were framed in decorative cartouches and bore lengthy inscriptions. Very few of them have been drawn from life; the first engravers, not trusting their own powers, were content to copy those exquisitely sensitive and delicate drawings, the crayon portraits which the Clouets made of royalty and the court at the time of Francis I, Henry II, and Catherine de Medicis. They are a wonderful pendant to Holbein’s drawings of the courtiers of Henry VIII. The finest are now hanging in the famous Gallery of Psyche at Chantilly. Nothing can describe the subtlety with which the artist has combined refinement and realism and drawn withdelicate color the features of the famous personages of those tragic times.
Morin.Louis XIII, King of FranceAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11⅜ × 9⅛ inches
Morin.Louis XIII, King of France
After the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11⅜ × 9⅛ inches
Morin.Anne of Austria, Regent of FranceWidow of Louis XIII and Mother of Louis XIVAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches
Morin.Anne of Austria, Regent of France
Widow of Louis XIII and Mother of Louis XIVAfter the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches
Here is Henry IV as a careless youth next to the terrible Catherine when she was an innocent-looking young bride; further on are the baby daughter of Francis I and the indomitable head of the house of Guise. The sad Charles IX is represented here as a mere boy; there, a week before his death, shaking with fever and tortured by remorse for the fearful massacre which he had instigated. The ill-fated Mary Stuart wears becomingly her widow’s mourning, and is surrounded by the chivalry and the beauty of the court. The success of these drawings was so great that every one desired complete sets of them, and the result was that they were copied over and over again, first by other artists, and finally by amateurs who were not very faithful to their models. The work of the Clouets was intelligently continued by several members of the family of Dumonstier, and the vogue of this exquisite form of portraiture lasted until the middle of the following century.
It was these finished miniatures which the first engravers attempted to reproduce on wood and copper; their drawing was in most cases weak, and consequently the resemblance was seldom faithful; their knowledge of line-work was very meager, and therefore the modeling was most primitive; but in spite of this, their work is interesting for its exquisite finish and its consistent effort to express the character of the individual. Such very personal little portraits as those of Philibert Delorme in his treatise on architecture, Orlando di Lasso in a book of motets, and the great Ambroise Paré in his treatise on the fractures ofthe skull, shared the fame of those of Henry IV by Thomas de Leu, and greatly increased the popularity of engraving.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century it had become extremely fashionable to dabble in engraving, and painters, architects, goldsmiths, noblemen and even ladies were busy gouging wood and cutting copper with an enthusiasm which has bequeathed us a mass of small illustrations, tail-pieces, grotesques, mottos, emblems and other embellishments. Then there appeared during the reign of Louis XIII a peculiar genius in Claude Mellan. He adopted such an original technique that he had practically no followers. Considering cross-hatching rank heresy, Mellan spent a great part of his life making facsimiles on copper of more than four score charming pencil-drawings which he had made from life, using distinct lines which he made broader in the shadows. Although he thereby succeeded in producing a set of very remarkable plates, he was prevented by the exaggerated simplicity of his system from securing all the detail, the refinement of expression necessary to a real psychological study, and he was unable to express any color, texture or chiaroscuro whatever.
The most original artistic genius at that time was Callot, who had introduced etching in France; he delighted everybody with the facility andespritwith which he handled the needle, and he produced a great number of plates full of crisply drawn little figures which possessed so much animation that nothing like them had previously been seen. His two attempts at portraiture, however, are far from being significant;it may be said that he was not serious enough for such work.
By that time portrait-engraving had become extinct in Germany, and it was achieving little of importance in Italy and Spain; in the Low Countries, however, it was producing masterpieces. Even if Rembrandt and Van Dyck had given the world nothing more than their etched portraits, their fame would live forever. In the former, the world found an artist who painted as effectively with the needle as with the brush, and an etcher who reveled in such powerful and correct chiaroscuro that his portraits were a perfect revelation. The glowing light with which he illumined his faces and the boldness and freedom of his line-work amazed the engravers of his time, for in comparison they had worked only in outline, and those who attempted to imitate him achieved very little success. In the plates of Rembrandt the engraved portrait reaches the last degree of warmth of expression and life.
As to Anthony Van Dyck, he had followed the example of Rubens and encouraged the leading engravers of Antwerp to reproduce his portraits on copper. The result was that noble work called his “Iconography,” which contained over a hundred portraits of the leading painters and art patrons of the time, most brilliantly engraved by Soutman, the Bolswerts, Vorstermann and Paul Pontius under the master’s jealous supervision. In directing this work Van Dyck developed such enthusiasm that he himself etched eighteen portraits from life, in which the faces are modeled with small dots; they are charming drawings which exhibit such a wonderful knowledge ofphysiognomy, and possess so much life and color in spite of the simplicity of their treatment, that they remain masterpieces for all times.
Through the genius of Rubens and Van Dyck the art of engraving had become transformed; at last life and color had come into it. No such brilliancy in the treatment of flesh and varied texture had been attained by pure line-work before the appearance of Pontius’s portrait of Rubens, and with the exception of the etchings of Rembrandt, nothing so human had previously been seen as Van Dyck’s etching of Pontius himself.
But in spite of the best achievements of the Flemish engravers, there was still an important advance to be made before the copperplate could give such a faithful translation of a painting that besides the drawing and the color, it could reproduce all the refinement of detail, all the texture and chiaroscuro, all the painter-like effect of the canvas. That interval could be bridged only by a born draughtsman who had the soul of a portrait-painter and by an artist who would devote himself exclusively to the solution of that one problem. For that final step of its development, reproductive engraving had to go to France and to the unique Jean Morin.
Morin.Cardinal RichelieuAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches
Morin.Cardinal Richelieu
After the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches
Morin.Pierre Maugis des GrangesMaître-d’Hôtel of Louis XIIIAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches
Morin.Pierre Maugis des Granges
Maître-d’Hôtel of Louis XIIIAfter the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches
It is incredible that so little should be known about an artist of his prominence, particularly as at that time the best artists were constantly “en evidence” and undertaking distant travels for the sake of their education and in order to gain patrons. We must assume that Morin lived a very quiet life and cared little for recognition. Who were his first masters remains a mystery; the references which are made tohim in the records of the time point only to the fact that he was always held in high esteem for the excellence of his work, and that everywhere his serious character commanded respect. Two things are nevertheless certain concerning him. One is that he had begun by becoming a well-schooled painter, for his etched work is of singularly uniform excellence; the other is that he had been influenced exclusively by the Flemish School. It was the etching of Van Dyck which tempted him to give up the brush for the graver, and it was his own peculiarly calm and conscientious temperament which impelled him to carry the original technique of that prince of portraiture to the last degree of finish.
On the other hand, it was from another Flemish artist, Philippe de Champaigne, who had made France his home, that he received inspiration and guidance throughout his life-work. In return for this he devoted himself to the faithful reproduction of as many of that master’s canvases as he could engrave before his death.
Morin’s work consists of a few figure-subjects and landscapes and fifty portraits. These are among the finest that were engraved during the seventeenth century, and they have the distinction of illustrating the reign of Louis XIII and his minister Richelieu. As an historical gallery they possess as much importance as the portraits made later by the school of Nanteuil: four of them are after Van Dyck, fourteen are from the works of various painters, including Titian, and all the rest, thirty-two in number, reproduce the dignified canvases of Philippe de Champaigne. It was natural for Morin to turn to the Flemish painter, notonly because the latter had soon after his arrival become the painter of the court and the head of the French School, but because his calm, precise art was admirably suited to the engraver’s work.
The canvases of Philippe de Champaigne have little of the power of Rubens, or the coloring and supreme elegance of Van Dyck, nor do they possess the depth and originality of the portraits of Rembrandt, but they are characterized by an uncommon strength of draughtsmanship and composition, and they unfailingly exhibit such profound seriousness, restraint and dignity as few masters can boast of. As in the case of most of Morin’s portraits, it is hard to gaze upon them without experiencing that peculiar sensation of familiarity with the human being represented, without being convinced that here is the bare truth just as an intelligent and thoroughly sincere nature beheld it, without feeling that some of the model’s soul has passed into the canvas. It could not be otherwise with the work of an artist who had toiled so earnestly to follow an ideal, and who himself had been visited by so much affliction. De Champaigne became at the end of his life a Jansenist and a devoted Port Royalist—that is, a member of a community of austere human beings whose lives were so simple and whose thoughts were so high that they were a perpetual reproach to the selfish clergy of the day and the empty butterflies who crowded the salons of Versailles.
He has never come into his own, principally because he stood in such close proximity to more brilliant lights, and also because so many of his scattered paintings have become darkened with age. His work as the painter of Richelieu established such a popularityfor the portrait as it had not known before and as it has not known since. To-day, when his name is mentioned, one shrugs his shoulders and says: “Oh, well, but what was he compared to Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt?”, and then suddenly remembers that it was he who painted Richelieu and that the full length portrait which hangs in the Salon Carré of the Louvre and the triple study of the head which is in the National Gallery, London, will always rank with the masterpieces of portrait-painting.
Such was the artist to whom Jean Morin went for advice and for whom he developed such intense admiration and devotion. The Flemish painter must have readily seen how much the engraver’s temperament had in common with his own, and immediately understood that his faultless drawing and conscientious nature would make of him an admirable interpreter of his canvases. Certain it is that he lost no time in encouraging him to develop his technique, and that he cheerfully gave him his portraits to copy. The friendship which ensued continued until death, and Morin devoted his life to popularizing the portraits of Philippe de Champaigne, later becoming himself affiliated with the noble sect of Port Royalists.
* * * * *
The peculiar significance of Morin’s work, aside from the fact that it has been the principal means of perpetuating the work of a remarkable artist, is that it represents the first effort in the history of Engraved Portraiture to reproduce a painted portrait with all its refinement of drawing and variety of tones. No such trouble had previously been taken fully to represent all the color and chiaroscuro of a picture. Inorder to accomplish this the engraver had to develop a painter’s technique, and that was something very different from the precise and methodical line-work of the engravers who had preceded him. The etched work of Callot was mere line-work; Van Dyck supplemented this with some delicate modeling made with small dots; and Morin, developing this system to the last degree of refinement, bent all his energy to the absolutely faithful reproduction of the canvas in every detail of line and gradation of light. His technique is chiefly etching combined with burin work. As a rule, his faces are modeled entirely with etched dots, and he does this with such delicacy and refinement that in many cases they have the quality of a fine mezzotint. Only in a few of his plates does he use line-work to deepen his shadows, and this is done over the stippling. By means of this system he was able to express the greatest variety of tones, from the very light complexion of a blond Englishwoman to the dark skin and blue-black hair of a southern Frenchman. The hair he always etched with great care, with a line admirable alike for its precision and freedom; the frame alone seems to have been done with the burin. It is, however, in the treatment of the costume that Morin shows his independence of technical finish; he makes little pretense at securing realism in his expression of texture. Compared to the work of Nanteuil the surface of his armor and his moiré silk cassocks and rich lace collars often lack realism, while his backgrounds possess little of that soft gradation which enhances the beauty of so many later engravings.
Morin.Henri de Lorraine, Comte d’HarcourtThe Marshal-in-Chief of the Armies of Louis XIIIAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11¹¹⁄₁₆ × 9⅜ inches
Morin.Henri de Lorraine, Comte d’Harcourt
The Marshal-in-Chief of the Armies of Louis XIIIAfter the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11¹¹⁄₁₆ × 9⅜ inches
Morin.Guido, Cardinal BentivoglioThe Papal Nuncio to the Court of Louis XIIIAfter the painting by Anthony Van DyckSize of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches
Morin.Guido, Cardinal Bentivoglio
The Papal Nuncio to the Court of Louis XIIIAfter the painting by Anthony Van Dyck
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches
But it is this very freedom which makes his plates so original and gives them such especial charm. Besides,why should etching partake of the character of slow and precise burin work? Morin’s chief preoccupation is the rendering of the face and the preservation of all the character of the original; it is evident that he spares no pains to make his reproduction an absolutely faithful one. As to the rest of the picture, he does not consider it necessary to do more than recall the picturesque effect of the original’s ensemble, but if he treats it with freedom he is careful to make every line serve a definite purpose; he is never careless. It is to his great sympathy and conscientiousness that Morin owed his success as a reproductive engraver, and the fact that his plates had a great influence on his contemporaries. Before him no such delicate tones and deep velvety blacks had been seen, no engraver had been so consistently correct and expressive in his drawing; so much justice had never been done to a painter.
The art of Morin was so personal that the efforts of his pupils Alix, Plattemontagne and Boulanger to follow his technique remained unsuccessful; he was as inimitable in his brilliant effects of chiaroscuro as Mellan with his fiendishly clever but exaggerated simplicity of line.
Nevertheless, the lesson of thorough faithfulness he had given was not lost; the seed fell on fertile ground when Robert Nanteuil, at the outset of his career, studied Morin’s work closely enough to imitate his technique in such portraits as those of Pierre Dupuis, the royal librarian, and the poet Gilles Menage. The engraver from Rheims had doubtless profited by the example of his own master Regnesson, whose work had already shown Morin’s influence. Those cleverlittle portraits as well as a few others done in that style show a marked advance on the previous ones, in which he had followed that of Mellan, and the delicate little dots with which their faces are modeled paved the way for that system of close, short strokes with which he eventually succeeded in imitating to perfection the peculiar texture of skin. Nanteuil was to inherit the best in all who had preceded him and to combine all previous systems into one which would carry the art of Engraved Portraiture to its greatest development; but it was Morin who gave him the most eloquent example and who pointed out to him the last remaining step to technical perfection.
His Work
Onlooking through a complete collection of Morin’s portraits one is immediately impressed by the small number of plates which denote crude beginnings. As none of them is dated, it is next to impossible to arrange his works chronologically, all the more so as the engraver perfected his technique and found his manner very early in his career. We find only one portrait which is really unsatisfactory, that ofLouis XI, copied possibly from an old miniature, and only two which show any hardness of tone, the portraits ofAugustinandChristophe de Thou; they are undoubtedly early works, the head of the dreaded hermit of Plessis-les-Tours being probably Morin’s first effort. Then we have that most Gallic of Frenchmen,Henry IV, a quaint head drawn with much character;Marie de Médicis, after Pourbus; andHenry II, after Clouet. These last two are most excellent plates, thefirst showing us that intriguing Italian princess shortly after her arrival from Florence, in all the glory of her wonderful complexion and golden hair; the second recalling the exquisite art of Clouet in the simplicity and delicacy of the treatment of the face and the superb detail of the costume.[1]We are then brought face to face with the greatPhilip IIof Spain, in one of Morin’s most serenely elegant plates after Titian, and the portraits of the two great saints of the time,Saint François de SalesandSan Carlo Borromeo. To the four portraits after Van Dyck we must give special attention, for they contain Morin’s masterpieces, the portrait ofN. Chrystin, son of the Spanish plenipotentiary at the Peace of Vervins, and that ofCardinal Bentivoglio, the papal nuncio to the court of Louis XIII. Here we have Morin in his grand manner, transferring all the color of the original canvas to his copperplate and interpreting his models with a boldness, a softness, a clearness of purpose and a strength of sympathy wholly admirable. In awarding the palm, we hesitate between the deep tones, the velvety finish in the head of the somber Spaniard and the subtle modeling of the beautifully illumined, sensitive Italian face. Either of these portraits alone would have established Morin’s fame.
[1]Why such an authority as Robert-Dumesnil should have classed the portrait of Henry IV’s queen among the doubtful plates of Morin is a mystery. It is clearly the work of that master, and although an early plate, it is one of his brilliant ones.
[1]Why such an authority as Robert-Dumesnil should have classed the portrait of Henry IV’s queen among the doubtful plates of Morin is a mystery. It is clearly the work of that master, and although an early plate, it is one of his brilliant ones.
The other two plates after Van Dyck represent women,Margaret Lemon, beloved of the painter, and theCountess of Caernarvon, a remarkable study in high lights, and one of Morin’s most delicate plates.
The remainder of the gallery consists of his interpretation of Philippe de Champaigne’s portraits, and the array of celebrities there represented is a notable one. What would we know of the features of that eccentric monarch, the melancholicLouis XIII, if we did not possess this striking etching of Morin? The father of “le roi soleil” is here posing, ill at ease, and probably wondering what Richelieu is going to make him do next. An unsatisfactory human being was he whose “principal merit was to have done what few mediocre characters ever do, bow down to the superiority of genius.” His queen,Anne of Austria, is here shown both in the quiet garb of a widow (a delightfully simple portrait) and in the more ceremonious court mourning, while his prime minister,Richelieu, is represented in a plate than which there is none more interesting among Morin’s works. A comparison between this impression of the great cardinal’s character and that recorded in the superb engraving by Nanteuil is a most interesting one. In the latter we see the steersman of the ship of state in all his grandeur of noble purpose and responsibility, and we feel the immense will-power with which, in constant danger of his life, he bore long with his enemies, and then, driven to action, “went far, very far and covered everything with his scarlet robe.” But in Morin’s interpretation of the canvas of de Champaigne we see quite another side of the great statesman. It is the Richelieu whom we perceive through some memoirs of the time (and not the least trustworthy ones), and in the literary history of the early seventeenth century. It is a man wholly lacking in a sense of humor, possessingplenty of vanity and constantly yearning for recognition as a literary light and a squire of dames.
Morin.Nicolas ChrystinSon of the Plenipotentiary of King Philip IV of Spain to thePeace of VervinsAfter the painting by Anthony Van DyckSize of the original engraving, 11½ x 9¼ inches
Morin.Nicolas Chrystin
Son of the Plenipotentiary of King Philip IV of Spain to thePeace of VervinsAfter the painting by Anthony Van Dyck
Size of the original engraving, 11½ x 9¼ inches
Morin.Antoine VitréPrinter to the King and the ClergyAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 12¼ x 8⅜ inches
Morin.Antoine Vitré
Printer to the King and the ClergyAfter the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 12¼ x 8⅜ inches
Quite a different portrait is that of his nephew,Vignerod, shown here in three-quarter figure as the Abbé de Richelieu, a most attractive plate, and one of the only two portraits of Morin’s in which the model is shown otherwise than in the usual bust form. The other one is that ofVitré, a famous printer of the time; it is one of the lowest-toned engraved portraits extant, and in its velvety blackness it is a most striking production. A fine impression of it will turn one’s thoughts to Rembrandt and show the full extent of Morin’s originality.
The list contains many famous personages:Mazarin;Michel Le Tellier;Charles de Valois, duc d’Angoulême, son of Charles IX and the beautiful Marie Touchet; theMaréchal d’Harcourt, the “Cadet à la perle” of the more famous portrait by Masson and the valorous head of the armies of Louis XIII; the charmingComtesse de Bossuand her secretly married second husband theDuc de Guise; theMaréchal de Villeroy, preceptor of Louis XIV;Potier de Gesvres, also a warrior; and theChancellor Marillac, whose brother was executed by Richelieu and who himself became the cardinal’s victim, though in a less tragic way. All these plates are an admirable interpretation of their models, and show an absolute lack of mannerism. With their brilliant contrasts of light and shade and the uncommon amount of texture due to the freedom of the line-work and the rich color of the ink employed, they have a richness of tone and a decorative effect shared by few of the portraits made later in the century. Some of them are engraved in a rather high key and show asimply modeled head against a light background, as in the case ofBrachet de la Milletière, the savant who was first an intolerant Calvinist and then became a militant Roman Catholic. In other portraits like that ofMaugis, themaître-d’hôtelof the king, the artist seems to have reveled in the deepest tones of his inky palette, and he renders the olive skin and the raven hair of this strong-featured individual with a most striking intensity.
Splendid likenesses of prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries are to be found among the portraits which complete this interesting gallery, but one there is which we must pause to contemplate, and it is the faithfully reproduced portrait of that extraordinary human being, J. Paul de Gondi, better known as theCardinal de Retz. In a masterpiece of draughtsmanship, Morin duplicates the art of de Champaigne in expressing all the cleverness and daring, the ambition and the sense of humor, of this born gambler, whose genius for intrigue was at the bottom of the war of the Fronde. One can see him, with his yellow, oily face, unkempt and unshaven, limping through the narrow streets of Paris, distributing largesses among a populace which, the following hour, he would betray to the nobles, and then again champion.
As a pendant we have the brilliantly executed head ofOmer Talon, avocat-général du Parlement, the greatest pillar of French jurisprudence and a great man in his day; it is a plate which Rembrandt would have deigned to look at more than once.
Morin.Jean-François-Paul de GondiThis personage is better known by his later title of Cardinal de RetzAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches
Morin.Jean-François-Paul de Gondi
This personage is better known by his later title of Cardinal de RetzAfter the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches
Morin. Omer TalonAdvocate-General of the Parliament of ParisAfter the painting by Philippe de ChampaigneSize of the original engraving, 12¼ × 9⅛ inches
Morin. Omer Talon
Advocate-General of the Parliament of ParisAfter the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 12¼ × 9⅛ inches
Finally the famous Port Royal is here represented in the persons ofJansenius, Bishop of Ypres, who raised such a storm in church circles of that time;Arnauld d’Andilly, the head of the great family of that name and the protector of Port Royal; andJean Du Verger de Houranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran, its confessor, a man worthy of the first centuries of Christianity. They were famous men in their day, and their names were on everybody’s lips; their story spells the most serious chapter of the history of their age, and still they are all but forgotten in comparison with the great personages of the court, and even their painted portraits are relegated to obscurity.
In these masterly prints of Morin, however, they appear to us just as they looked in their day, with much of their strength and weakness, their aspirations and their secret ambitions. So much animation is there in their faces that it is no hard matter to feel like the old monk in the Spanish monastery who, left alone of all his brothers, said, as he looked on the new pictures by Velasquez, “I sometimes thinkweare the shadows.”