 This lecture is entitled The French Baroque under Louis XIV, or I'm Rich and Powerful, You're Not. Now, art created under Louis XIV deserves its very own lecture, because conditions in France when Louis XIV was king were different than they had been with kings that came before him. And the main difference is that with Louis XIV, all power was in his hands. And that might sound a little strange to you because you might think, well, he's a king, of course all power was in his hands. But the difference is that before Louis XIV, kings kind of shared their power and shared decision-making with other important people in France. But with Louis XIV, that went away and literally all power was in his hands. And he gained absolute rule. Absolute rule. And he also ruled by divine right. And that's the idea that God, the divine, has said you have the right to rule. So between these two things, Louis XIV really had a runaway sense of power. All power was in his hands. And so when we take a look at the art created under Louis XIV, especially art created in an official capacity, we should keep this in mind. And really everything was created with the idea of in some way or another glorifying Louis XIV. So let's take a look at this image on the left, which is a portrait of Louis XIV by an artist known as Yassant Rigo. Yassant Rigo. And it dates to 1701. And it is a portrait of Louis XIV. And I think you can see right away this is a really elegant, noble portrait of Louis XIV. And he really, his power is emphasized in this painting. And I think you can see that in a few ways. One thing, take a look right here at the sort of front corner of this space. He's elevated a little bit. So he's looking down on us. And of course that's a very symbolic thing to be looking down on someone. And I think that's kind of what the message of the painting is. I'm rich and powerful, you're not. I think it really comes across in this painting. So he's above us. He's also draped in all of this finery. I mean, look at this rich garb that he's wearing. You can see the texture of this fur and the velvet of the curtain behind him. It's all very elegant. And then of course there's a crown over here. So if there was any doubt as to his wealth and status, the objects in this painting put those doubts out of our mind. Another thing that you should notice about this painting is the use of a classical style. And that is the style of art under Louis XIV. Classical. So you hear Louis XIV, you should think classical. And we see that in a few ways. I mean, notice there's classical architecture in the background. You can see this plaster back here with a classical capital. You can see the base of a column here. And there's even some relief sculpture in the background. A classical style relief sculpture. But also in the style of the painting. Things are very clear and crisp. And there isn't that sort of murky realism that we saw with Caravaggio and his followers in the earlier Baroque. Now it might help to view this work alongside a work created before Louis's rise to power. So here's Rigo's portrait of Louis XIV on the left. And this, hopefully you remember, is Simon Vuet. And this is the toilet of Venus dating to 1629. And just to refresh your memory, Vuet had moved away from the realism of Caravaggio and the Caravagisti. And he embraces again that more classical style, that classical vein of Baroque art. And this is classical in its subject matter, right? Because this is Venus here. And we have a very sculptural body. It looks almost like classical sculpture in this figure of Venus. And again, we have that, what I mentioned before, that crisp, clear, concise style. And you can see that has carried on to Rigo's portrait of Louis XIV. And I mentioned when we discussed Vuet that he was in a way a bridge to the future. A move beyond the chiaroscuro and the realism of Caravaggio into this more, the style that would prevail later in the century. When we look at art created under Louis XIV, it's really important to consider one of the most important artists from the period. And that artist is, you see two of his works on the screen here, and his name is Charles Le Brun. And Le Brun was a real favorite artist of Louis XIV. He led the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and sort of helped dictate official accepted painting styles in France. So he is a really, really important figure when we look at the art created under Louis XIV. And he worked in all kinds of media. He was a painter, he was an interior designer, he was an architect, he was a sculptor. So really important in this period in French architecture, French art. And of course, he really pushed that agenda of classical art. And I think you can see right away if you look at this painting up here, which was done by Charles Le Brun, and it's Alexander in Babylon. It dates to 1665. Let's write that down. Alexander in Babylon, 1665. Now hopefully right away you can see this is a very classicizing painting. We have classical architecture all over the place. People dressed in classical dress. And if you know some of classical history, Alexander might ring some bells for you. He was a historical figure from the classical world. And this depicts his defeat of an enemy in Babylon and entering into the enemy's city. So this is a classical subject, classical style. Again, we have that crisp, clear style. And even if you take a look, the sort of horizontal emphasis of the story here is a lot like classical sarcophagi or classical relief sculpture. So in that way, it's classicizing too. But here's Alexander right here entering his enemy's territory. And I said at the beginning that pretty much all art created under Louis XIV is in some way an attempt to glorify Louis XIV. So how might this painting glorify Louis XIV? Well, you might think you're supposed to see this as sort of an analogy. Louis XIV's greatness parallels Alexander's greatness and he is certainly this powerful victor. So always a subtext when we're looking at the art created under Louis XIV. And finally, I just wanted to show you one example of architecture because that's very important when we look at Louis XIV as well. I mean, consider Versailles, for example. And so this, what you're looking at on the right is actually the east front of the Louvre. East front of Louvre. And that was a palace. And it was built around 1667 to 70. And this was Charles Le Brun in collaboration with two other important architects from the time. And their names are Claude Perot. I'll just write their last names here for you. And Louis Le Vaux. So they also were involved in working on this east front of the building. Now, I think right away you can see this is a really classical style building. We have columns, cornice. We have a little bit of a temple front here with the columns across the front and the triangular pediment. All these things that hopefully you immediately see as classical here. But this building is really famous because it is considered one of the first expressions of a really distinct French Baroque architecture. And there are a few things that these architects contributed to that. The first thing you should notice is, let's take a look at this section of the building right here. Notice something interesting about the columns. Do you notice anything kind of new here? Hopefully you'll notice the columns are grouped in pairs. And that became a hallmark of French Baroque architecture and is a departure from classicism that we've seen so far. And again, hallmark of French Baroque architecture. Another interesting thing about this building is it's actually a three-story building, but it's constructed in such a way that it looks like one massive imposing story. On top of this tall podium. And what do you think the effect of that would be? Of having one massive story on a tall podium. Well, it's imposing. It's authoritative. It has a grandeur to it. And that of course is very in line with the goals of Louis XIV and France at this time. So important to keep this stuff in mind, especially as we move forward and take a closer look at the palace of Versailles. You're going to be taking a tour of that. So keep some of these details in your mind as we move forward. And certainly that sense of grandeur and imposing power. Because really at Versailles all of these ideals kind of come to a head and really are taken to new heights.