Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) was a French painter, art theorist and director of art academies who served as court painter to Louis XIV, who called him the greatest French artist of his time. He played a central role in shaping the standards of French Baroque art and dominated the artistic life of seventeenth-century France, and his most significant surviving work is the decoration of the Palace of Versailles, including the Hall of Mirrors. He also wrote an influential treatise on depicting human emotion in art, Methode pour apprendre a dessiner les passions, published after his death in 1698, which shaped art theory for the following two centuries.