Roger de Piles was a French painter, engraver, art critic and diplomat.

Life

Born in Clamecy

Clamecy, Nièvre

Clamecy is a commune in the Nièvre department in central France.Clamecy is the capital of an arrondissement in the department of Nièvre, at the confluence of the Yonne and Beuvron and on the Canal du Nivernais, 46 m. N.N.E...

, Roger de Piles started his career in art as a pupil of Claude François.

In 1662 he became tutor to Michel Amelot de Gournay

Michel Amelot de Gournay

Michel-Jean Amelot, baron de Brunelles, marquis de Gournay , was a French diplomat, conseiller d'état to Louis XIV of France from 1698, and connoisseur...

, whom he was to follow throughout his life, acting as secretary to his various missions as French ambassador to Venice, Portugal, Spain.

In Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 (1682–1685) he started a famous collection of prints, drawings and paintings of Giorgione

Giorgione

Giorgione was a Venetian painter of the High Renaissance in Venice, whose career was cut off by his death at a little over thirty. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work...

, Correggio, Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...

, Rubens, Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel was a history painter, the more famous son of the French painter Noël Coypel.Antoine studied under his father, with whom he spent four years at Rome. At the age of eighteen he was admitted into the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, of which he became professor and rector in...

, Jean-Baptiste Forest.

He also acquired a taste for political intrigue using his travels ostensibly undertaken to study the European collections, as a buyer for Louis XIV, as cover for confidential missions - for example in Germany and Austria (1685) on behalf of Louis' minister, the marquis de Louvois.

He was not always fortunate as a spy. In 1692, during the War of the League of Augsburg, he was arrested in the Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

 carrying a false passport and imprisoned for the next five years. He spent his time writing L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres ...avec un traité du peintre parfait. published in 1699 following his appointement as Conseiller Honoraire to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture

Académie de peinture et de sculpture

The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture , Paris, was founded in 1648, modelled on Italian examples, such as the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. Paris already had the Académie de Saint-Luc, which was a city artist guild like any other Guild of Saint Luke...

.

In 1705 he followed Amelot de Gournay to Spain but illness forced him to return to Paris, where he died in 1709.

Art critic

His important contribution to aesthetic theory

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

 rests on his Dialogue sur le coloris ("Dialogue on colours"), in which he initiated his famous defence of Rubens in the argument started in 1671 by Philippe de Champaigne

Philippe de Champaigne

Philippe de Champaigne was a Flemish-born French Baroque era painter, a major exponent of the French school.-Early life:Born in Brussels of a poor family, Champaigne was a pupil of the landscape painter Jacques Fouquières...

 on the relative merits of drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

 and color

Color

Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...

 in the work of Titian

Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...

 (in a lecture to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture

Académie de peinture et de sculpture

The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture , Paris, was founded in 1648, modelled on Italian examples, such as the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. Paris already had the Académie de Saint-Luc, which was a city artist guild like any other Guild of Saint Luke...

 on Titian's Virgin and Child with St John.)

The argument is most fascinating as an early debate on classic vs modern in painting; in essence on the mathematics of proportion

Proportion (architecture)

Proportion is the relation between elements and a whole.-Architectural proportions:In architecture the whole is not just a building but the set and setting of the site. The things that make a building and its site "well shaped" include the orientation of the site and the buildings on it to the...

 and perspective

Perspective (graphical)

Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...

 in drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

—the classic approach— as opposed to the colored brush

Brush

A brush is a tool with bristles, wire or other filaments, used for cleaning, grooming hair, make up, painting, surface finishing and for many other purposes. It is one of the most basic and versatile tools known to mankind, and the average household may contain several dozen varieties...

 stroke—the approach of the moderns. In his detailed study of the argument, Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV (1965), B. Teyssèdre gives a touching account of the bohème of the "modern" réfusés in seventeenth century Paris, a history that was to repeat itself with the Impressionists.

In the course of the argument Roger de Piles introduced the term "clair-obscur" (Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....

) to highlight the effect of color in accentuating the tension between light and dark in a painting.

The way Roger de Piles documented his argument with Venetian and northern European examples was of influence to Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel was a history painter, the more famous son of the French painter Noël Coypel.Antoine studied under his father, with whom he spent four years at Rome. At the age of eighteen he was admitted into the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, of which he became professor and rector in...

, Hyacinthe Rigaud

Hyacinthe Rigaud

Hyacinthe Rigaud was a French baroque painter of Catalan origin whose career was based in Paris.He is renowned for his portrait paintings of Louis XIV, the royalty and nobility of Europe, and members of their courts and considered one of the most notable French portraitists of the classical period...

, Nicolas de Largillière

Nicolas de Largillière

Nicolas de Largillière was a painter born in Paris, France.-Early life:Largillière's father, a merchant, took him to Antwerp at the age of three. As a boy, he spent nearly two years in London. Sometime after his return to Antwerp, a failed attempt at business led him to the studio of Goubeau...

 and François de Troy

François de Troy

François de Troy was a French painter and engraver who became principal painter to King James II in exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Director of the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture.-Early life:...

.

Balance of painters

To his last published work: Cours de peinture par principes avec un balance de peintres (1708) de Piles appended a list of fifty-six major painters in his own time, with whose work he had acquainted himself as a connoisseur during his travels.

To each painter in the list he gave marks from 0 to 18 for composition, drawing, color and expression. This gave an overview of aesthetic appreciation hingeing on the balance between color and design. The highest marks went to Raffaello Sanzio and Rubens, with a slight bias on color for Rubens, a slight bias on drawing for Raphaël. Painters who scored very badly in anything but color were Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...

, Giorgione

Giorgione

Giorgione was a Venetian painter of the High Renaissance in Venice, whose career was cut off by his death at a little over thirty. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work...

 and remarkably Michelangelo Caravaggio with 16 on color and 0 (zero) on expression. Painters who fell far behind Rubens and Raphaël but whose balance between color and design was perfect were Lucas van Leyden

Lucas van Leyden

Lucas van Leyden , also named either Lucas Hugensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a Dutch engraver and painter, born and mainly active in Leiden...

, Sebastian Bourdon, Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

.

List

The complete list is transcribed here from Manlio Brusatin:Histoire des couleurs (Paris: Flammarion, 1986, pp. 103–104), reproduced in Elisabeth G. Holt Literary Sources of Art History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), pp. 415–416)

Painter	Composition	Drawing	Color	Expression
Andrea del Sarto Andrea del Sarto Andrea del Sarto was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. Though highly regarded during his lifetime as an artist senza errori , his renown was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci,...	12	16	9	8
Federico Barocci Federico Barocci Federico Barocci was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker. His original name was Federico Fiori, and he was nicknamed Il Baroccio, which still in northwestern Italian dialects means a two wheel cart drawn by oxen...	14	15	6	10
Jacopo Bassano Jacopo Bassano Jacopo Bassano , known also as Jacopo dal Ponte, was an Italian painter who was born and died in Bassano del Grappa near Venice, from which he adopted the name.- Life :...	6	8	17	0
Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...	4	6	14	O
Sebastian Bourdon	10	8	8	4
Charles Le Brun Charles Le Brun Charles Le Brun , a French painter and art theorist, became the all-powerful, peerless master of 17th-century French art.-Biography:-Early life and training:...	16	16	8	16
I Carracci Carracci There are several notable people with the name Carracci:* Agostino Carracci , Italian painter and printmaker* Annibale Carracci , Italian Baroque painter and brother of Agostino Carracci...	15	17	13	13
Cavalier D'Arpino	10	10	6	2
Correggio Antonio da Correggio Antonio Allegri da Correggio , usually known as Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century...	13	13	15	12
Daniele da Volterra Daniele da Volterra Daniele Ricciarelli , better known as Daniele da Volterra, was an Italian mannerist painter and sculptor.He is best remembered for his association, for better or worse, with the late Michelangelo. Several of Daniele's most important works were based on designs made for that purpose by Michelangelo...	12	15	5	8
Abraham van Diepenbeeck Abraham van Diepenbeeck Abraham van Diepenbeeck was an erudite and accomplished Dutch painter of the Flemish School.-Biography:...	11	10	14	6
Il Domenichino	15	17	9	17
Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...	8	10	10	8
Giorgione Giorgione Giorgione was a Venetian painter of the High Renaissance in Venice, whose career was cut off by his death at a little over thirty. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work...	8	9	18	4
Giovanni da Udine Giovanni da Udine Giovanni Nanni, also Giovanni de' Ricamatori, better known as Giovanni da Udine , was an Italian painter and architect born in Udine....	10	8	16	3
Giulio Romano Giulio Romano Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...	15	16	4	14
Guercino	18	10	10	4
Guido Reni Guido Reni Guido Reni was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style.-Biography:Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de’ Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in that...	x	13	9	12
Holbein Hans Holbein the Younger Hans Holbein the Younger was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history...	9	10	16	3
Jacob Jordaens Jacob Jordaens Jacob Jordaens was one of three Flemish Baroque painters, along with Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, to bring prestige to the Antwerp school of painting. Unlike those contemporaries he never traveled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their...	10	8	16	6
Lucas Jordaens	13	12	9	6
Giovanni Lanfranco Giovanni Lanfranco Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.-Biography:Giovanni Gaspare Lanfranco was born in Parma, the third son of Stefano and Cornelia Lanfranchi, and was placed as a page in the household of Count Orazio Scotti...	14	13	10	5
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...	15	16	4	14
Lucas van Leyden Lucas van Leyden Lucas van Leyden , also named either Lucas Hugensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a Dutch engraver and painter, born and mainly active in Leiden...	8	6	6	4
Michelangelo Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...	8	17	4	8
Caravaggio	6	6	16	O
Murillo Bartolomé Estéban Murillo Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children...	6	8	15	4
Otho Venius Otto van Veen Otto van Veen, also known by his Latinized name Otto Venius or Octavius Vaenius, was a painter, draughtsman, and humanist active primarily in Antwerp and Brussels in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century...	13	14	10	10
Palma il Vecchio	5	6	16	0
Palma il Giovane	12	9	14	6
Il Parmigianino Parmigianino Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola , also known as Francesco Mazzola or more commonly as Parmigianino or sometimes "Parmigiano", was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma...	10	15	6	6
Gianfrancesco Penni Gianfrancesco Penni Gianfrancesco Penni , also known as Giovan Francesco, was an Italian painter, student of Raphael.Born in Florence to a family of weavers, Penni entered very early in Raphael's workshop, and collaborated with him for several works, including the famous Rooms of the Vatican Palace as well as the...	O	15	8	0
Perin del Vaga Perin del Vaga Perino del Vaga was an Italian painter of the Late Renaissance/Mannerism.-Biography:...	15	16	7	6
Sebastiano del Piombo Sebastiano del Piombo Sebastiano del Piombo , byname of Sebastiano Luciani, was an Italian Renaissance-Mannerist painter of the early 16th century famous for his combination of the colors of the Venetian school and the monumental forms of the Roman school.- Biography :Sebastiano del Piombo belongs to the painting school...	8	13	16	7
Primaticcio	15	14	7	10
Raphael Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...	17	18	12	18
Rembrandt	15	6	17	12
Rubens	18	13	17	17
Francesco Salviati Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati) Francesco de' Rossi was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence, also active in Rome. He is known by many names, prominently the adopted name Francesco Salviati or as Il Salviati, but also Francesco Rossi and Cecchino del Salviati.-Biography:Salviati was born and died in Florence...	13	15	8	8
Eustache Le Sueur Eustache Le Sueur Eustache Le Sueur or Lesueur , one of the founders of the French Academy of Painting, was born in Paris, where he passed his whole life....	15	15	4	15
Teniers David Teniers the Younger David Teniers the Younger was a Flemish artist born in Antwerp, the son of David Teniers the Elder. His son David Teniers III and his grandson David Teniers IV were also painters...	15	12	13	6
Pietro Testa Pietro Testa Pietro Testa was an Italian High Baroque artist, best known, both to his contemporaries and modern appreciation, as a printmaker and draftsman, who was active in Rome.-Biography:...	11	15	0	6
Tintoretto Tintoretto Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...	15	14	16	4
Titian Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...	12	15	18	6
Van Dyck	15	10	17	13
Vanius	15	15	12	13
Veronese Paolo Veronese Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...	15	10	16	3
Taddeo Zuccari Taddeo Zuccari Taddeo Zuccari was an Italian painter, one of the most popular members of the Roman mannerist school.-Biography:...	13	14	10	9
Federico Zuccari Federico Zuccari Federico Zuccari, also known as Federigo Zuccaro , was an Italian Mannerist painter and architect, active both in Italy and abroad.-Biography:Zuccari was born at Sant'Angelo in Vado, near Urbino ....	10	10	8	8

Writings

• De Arte Graphica (1668) (Translation from Latin to French of Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy
  Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy
  Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy , French painter and writer on his art, was born in Paris, son of an apothecary.He was destined for the medical profession, and well educated in Latin and Greek; but, having a natural propensity for the fine arts, he would not apply to his intended vocation, and was...
  
  's work - with supplementary comments by Roger de Piles).
• Dialogue sur le coloris ( Dialogue upon Colour, 1673)
• Le Cabinet de Monseigneur le Duc de Richelieu (1676)
• Lettre d'un français à un gentilhomme flamand (1676)
• La Vie de Rubens (1681)
• L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres ( The Art of Painting and the Lives of the Painters, 1699), a seven part book of painter biographies:
  • The list of painters in Part 5: Roger de Piles' artists from Lombardy
    Roger de Piles' artists from Lombardy
    Roger de Piles's L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres...avec un traité du peintre parfait , was a major art biography of painters. It was written by the French spy Francois Tortebat, who used the pen name Roger de Piles for his literary works...
    
    
  • The list of painters in Part 6: Roger de Piles' artists from Germany and the Low Countries
    Roger de Piles' artists from Germany and the Low Countries
    Roger de Piles's L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres...avec un traité du peintre parfait , was a major art biography of painters. It was written by the French spy Francois Tortebat, who used the pen name Roger de Piles for his literary works...
    
    
  • The list of painters in Part 7: Roger de Piles' artists from France
    Roger de Piles' artists from France
    Roger de Piles's L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres...avec un traité du peintre parfait , was a major art biography of painters. It was written by the French spy Francois Tortebat, who used the pen name Roger de Piles for his literary works...
    
    
• Cours de peinture par principes avec un balance de peintres ( The Principles of Painting, 1708), see: formal analysis
  Formal analysis
  A formal analysis is an established method for analyzing works of art. First introduced by Roger de Piles , in his book the Principles of Painting, the technique of formal analysis is more fully developed by Roger Fry in Vision and Design .For a particular work of art, a formal analysis consists of...
  
  

External links

• Roger de Piles
• Roger de Piles:Portrait (French)
• Rubens contre Poussin (French)
• Image resource: Web Gallery of Art
• Roger de Piles at arthistoricum.net (German)