Paul Fréart de Chantelou

Paul Fréart de Chantelou (1609-1694) is a French collector of the xvii^e century. He attended and encouraged major artists of the time, in particular Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680).

Chantelou and Chick

The Chick return in Paris in 1640 would undoubtedly have remained a failure if the artist had not stuck prestigious customers of Parisian amateurs, among which Chantelou was one of most influential. The two men maintained besides a long correspondence which constitutes, still today, a rich source of details on the life of the artist and his artistic design of then. Among the orders that Chantelou made in Poussin from Paris, one counts in particular the series of the Seven sacraments (1644-1648) pertaining to the collection of the duke of Sutherland and currently in deposit to the National Gallery of Edinburgh, as well as famous the Autoportrait (1650) preserved at the museum of Louvre.

Chantelou and Bernin

In 1665, Louis XIV, via his minister Colbert, calls Bernin in Paris within the framework of the project of reorganization of Louvre. The king indicates Chantelou to accommodate it and accompany it during his Parisian stay. From this meeting is born a newspaper that Chantelou wanted very precise, and that it wrote almost from day to day, since the arrival of Bernin to Paris at the beginning of June until its departure, five months later. Initially intended for his/her brother who lived in province and had not been able to attend this meeting, this Journal became a document of foreground, as well from an artistic point of view as historical. Indeed, it informs us not only about the personality of the artist and his design of art, but also about the daily life of the courtiers; this confrontation between the king of France and the Italian artist most famous of its time reveals all its political scope thus.

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