VEN in the time of Charlemagne it was the custom to cover the walls of churches with paintings, "in order to instruct the people, and to decorate the buildings;" and a history of the French School of Painting can be traced almost as far back as the history of France itself. Painting on glass for cathedral windows was likewise invented or perfected; and many French prelates and abbots ornamented their churches and monasteries with painting of all kinds.

But the real history of French art, the pupil of Italy, can only be said to have commenced after the slow and laborious development of the Middle Ages; when all the knowledge possessed by antiquity re-appeared at one time, and produced the revival known by the name of the RENAISSANCE. In Italy, this began as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, but it was nearly a hundred years later before the French school felt its influence.

René of Anjou, Count of Provence, the prince who was successively despoiled of Naples, Lorraine and Anjou, and who consoled himself for his political disgraces by cultivating Poetry, Music, and Painting, was born about 1408, and learned Painting in Italy, either under Il Zingaro at Naples, when he was disputing the crown of the Two Sicilies with the kings of Aragon, or under Bartolommeo della Gatta at Florence, when forming an alliance with the Duke of Milan against the Venetians. "He

composed," says the chronicler Nostradamus, "several beautiful and elegant romances, such as La Conquests de la Doulce Merci, and the Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance, but he loved Painting, in particular, with a passionate love, and was gifted by nature with such an uncommon aptitude for this noble profession that he was famous among the most excellent painters and illuminators of his time, which may be perceived by several masterpieces accomplished by his divine and royal hand." In the Cluny Museum there is a picture by René which, although not worthy of being called a "divine masterpiece" of the period that had produced Fra Angelico and Masaccio, is yet valuable and remarkable. The subject is the Preaching of the Magdalen at Marseilles, where tradition asserts that she was the first to proclaim the gospel. He died in 1480.

Jehan Fouquet (1415-1483), born at Tours, painted the portrait of Pope Eugenius IV. at Rome, and studied the Italian artists of the time of Masaccio. His works, or at least those of them which remain, are to be found at Munich, Frankfort, and in the large library at Paris; they consist only of manuscript ornamentation.

Jean Clouet, the younger, sometimes called Janet (in cotemporary records he is called Jehan, Jehannot and Jehannet), was a Fleming who settled in France and was made painter and valet-de-chambre to Francis I., in or before 1518. He died in 1541.

François Clouet (ab. 1500-1571-'74), usually called Janet-a contemporary of those who studied art in Italy, but himself a distant disciple of Van Eyck, through the lessons of his father-was born at Tours. He was court painter to Francis I. Henri II., Francis II. and Charles IX. His pictures in the Louvre are portraits of Charles IX. and his

wife, Elizabeth of Austria, which are truthful and of wonderful delicacy. Besides the portraits of Henri II., of Henri IV. as a child, of the Duke of Guise, le Balafré, of the wise chancellor Michell a l'Hôpital, all of his school, there are two small compositions formed by several portraits in a group; one is of the Marriage of Margaret of Lorraine, sister of the Guises, with the Duke Anne of Joyeuse; the other is a Court Ball, at which Henri III., then king, his mother, Catherine de Médicis, young Henry of Navarre, and other personages of the time, are present. These pictures, which are as valuable to the history of

France as the

chronicles of

Monstrelet or the journals of L'Estoile, are no less precious to the history of Painting as the memorials of an art of which they were the earliest expression. In Hampton Court there are portraits by Clouet of Mary Queen of Scots and Francis II. of France, as Dauphin; and at Castle Howard, there is a

of pictures. His principal work is a Last Judgment, and it is doubtless the similarity of subject rather than of style which has given its author the name of the "French Michelangelo." Although it was the first picture by a French artist which had the honor of being engraved, this masterpiece of Jean Cousin lay for a long time forgotten in the Sacristy of Minimes at Vincennes. It has now found a place in the Louvre.

Martin Fréminet (1567-1619), the son of a painter, was born at Paris. After a long sojourn in Italy, he brought with him the taste which prevailed there at the close of the great age, a little before the foundation of the Carracci school. Le a ving the calm and simple beauty which Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Correggio had taught, he adopted, like the mistaken imitators of Michelangelo, an ostentatious display of the science of anatomy, and a mania for foreshortening. At

BY NICOLAS POUSSIN.

fine painting by him, of the Family of Henry II., giving life-size portraits of Catherine de Médicis and her children, and a collection of nearly three hundred portraits-drawings in black and white with flesh tints-of kings and queens and important personages of the French Court. A Man's portrait by him is in the National Gallery, and examples of his art are in the galleries of Hertford House, and Althorp.

Jean Cousin (1501-1589) was born at Soucy, near Sens. Unfortunately, he was more occupied with painting church-windows than with his easel; and, as he devoted a part of his time to Engraving, Sculpture and Literature, he has left but a small number

the same time his great pictures in the Louvreboth the Venus Waiting for Mars, and Eneas Abandoning Dido-are remarkable because he painted his figures the size of life. After a long series of sacred subjects, he produced mythologic scenes. Henri IV. appointed Fréminet painter to the court, and commissioned him to decorate the ceiling of the chapel at Fontainebleau.

Simon Vouet (1590-1649), also the son of a painter, had been from his earliest youth remarkable for his precocious talents; and after fourteen years' residence at Rome carried the lessons of the Carracci school back with him to Paris. In his great composition, the Presentation in the Temple

in the Entombment, the Madonna, the Roman Charity (a young woman feeding an old man), we trace clearly the influence of the Bolognese school, although Vouet possesses neither the profound expression of Domenichino, the elegance of Guido, nor the powerful chiaro-oscuro of Guercino. We must do him the justice to add that it was his lessons which taught Eustache le Sueur, Charles le Brun, and Pierre Mignard; and that thus, like the Carracci, he was greater through his pupils than through his own works.

Jacques Callot (1594-1635) was of a noble family of Nancy in Lorraine. He was an enemy to all discipline, and, in order to give free course to his fancy, fled from his father's house in the train of a troop of mountebanks. Occupied with etching by a process of his own invention-his Beggars, Gipsies, Nobles, Devils, and scenes descriptive of the Miseries of War, for which he is most celebrated-he left us but a small number of paintings.

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the prince of the French school, was born at Andelys. He was descended from a noble family of Soissons who had lost their property in the civil wars: his father served under Henri IV. Braving poverty, Poussin set out for Rome, on foot and almost destitute. There his talent was first developed before the masterpieces of past ages; and although at a subsequent period the King called him to Paris, in order to add the luster of a great artist to his own fame, Poussin soon tired of the annoyances caused by the court painters, and went back to Rome, which he did not again leave. There, in solitary study, and always avoiding, with a force of judgment in which he is scarcely equaled, the bad taste of his country and his time, he progressed step by step toward perfection.

One

Two of Poussin's best pictures are in the National Gallery, which contains seven works by him. is a forcible painting simply called a Bacchanalian Dance, but varied and full of pleasant incident; the other, a Bacchanalian Festival, although less finished in execution, is one of his most important works.

In the Louvre there are some immense pictures by Poussin, with full-length figures: the Last Supper, Francis Xavier in India, and the Virgin Appearing to S. John. His only painting of this size out of France is the Martyrdom of S. Erasmus, the pendent, in St. Peter's at Rome, to the Martyrdom

of S. Processo, by his friend Valentin. Among his religious compositions are the charming group of Rebecca at the Well, when Eliezer recognizes her among her companions, and offers her the ring; Moses Exposed on the Nile by his mother and sister; Moses Saved from the Water by the daughter of Pharaoh; the Manna in the Desert, a scene admirable in the grandeur of the whole, and the interest of the details; and the Judgment of Solomon.

We must also class among the Old Testament subjects the four celebrated pendents named Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, far better known by the names of their subjects. Spring is typified by Adam and Eve in Paradise, before their fall; Summer, by Ruth Gleaning in the fields of Boaz; Autumn, by the Return of the Spies from the Promised Land, bringing back the wonderful bunch of grapes, which two men can scarcely carry; Winter, by the Deluge. There ïs no need of any word of explanation or praise for this picture; it was Poussin's last work; he was seventy-one years of age when he painted it, and he died soon afterward at Rome. Among the subjects taken from the Gospels and from the Acts of the Apostles, we must call attention to the Adoration of the Magi, the Repose in Egypt, the Blind Men of Jericho, the Woman taken in Adultery, the Death of Sapphira, and S. Paul caught up into the Seventh

Heaven.

But Poussin did not confine himself to biblical subjects; he also, like all the great masters, treated subjects from profane history, as the Will of Eudamidas (in England), and the Rape of the Sabines; and entered the regions of pure mythology, as may be seen by the Death of Eurydice and the Triumph of Flora, at Paris; he also treated sometimes of allegory for instance, the Triumph of Truth; but whatever he undertook, or from whatever source his subjects were taken, he was always an historic painter.

Gaspard Dughet (1613-1675), called Gaspard Poussin, was born of French parents in Rome. Nicholas Poussin married his sister, and under the instructions of his brother-in-law Dughet became an excellent landscape painter. His subjects were usually taken from picturesque scenes in the neigh borhood of Rome. His works abound in private galleries in England. Six of his paintings are in the National Gallery.

Claude Gellée, of Lorraine (1600-1682), called

Claude "), there is the Embarkation of S. Ursula, and another marine piece, a Seaport at Sunset, with palaces in the foreground, a wonderful master-piece; and eight landscapes with figures, representing Hagar in the Desert; David in the Cave of Adullam; the Death of Procris; Narcissus falling in Love with his own Image-an exquisite work-and four others.

Many of Claude's pictures are in private cabinets, especially in England, where the great landscape painter was at one time much admired. The Duke

BY ANTOINE WATTEAU.

the happy contrast of light and shadow, the majesty of the whole, in short, everything that can delight the eye. "Claude Lorraine," wrote Goethe, "knew the material world thoroughly, even to the slightest detail, and he used it as a means of expressing the world in his own soul."

A series of sketches which Claude made for his pictures are preserved in a book which he called Libra di Verità; these are now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. They were engraved by Earlom.