Concerning the ‘Mechanical’ Parts of Painting and the Artistic Culture of Seventeenth-Century France

Abstract

This essay shows that a continuous and ever increasing appreciation of “painterly” handling and effects existed in France since about 1630, a current of taste that is largely invisible to historians who consult only French artistic production or theoretical writings before ca. 1670. Formed mainly by collecting and connoisseurship practices, by the growth in numbers of amateur artists, and by the importation of Italian ideas about art, it helps to explain the success of the “Rubeniste” initiative and the emergence of pictorial trends that contributed to the transformation of the character of French art at the turn of the century.