Andre Felibien’s Entretiens was the first major attempt in France to encapsulate the history of western art into a broad biographical narrative, following in the tradition of Vasari. The Entretiens were originally intended to follow the Vasarian tradition of art history, culminating in the ‘perfection’ of a singular artistic genius - in this case the artist was the French painter Nicolas Poussin. However, like Vasari, Felibien went on to extend the biographies to other prominent contemporary painters.
As court historian to the king of France, Louis XIV and secretary to the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture, Felibien interweaves contemporary aesthetic arguments and concerns, throughout the accounts of the lives of the artists that constitute the Entretiens.
This included contemporary debates over whether drawing/design (dessein) or colour (colore) was the most prominent attribute within a work of art. Drawing was seen as preeminent in conveying the narrative content of a painting, while colour was associated with defining its sensual appeal to the senses.
The French painter, Nicolas Poussin, was himself seen as embodying dessein while the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens was conceived as epitomising the artistic use of colore. Such aesthetic debates frame a context for the biographies of the artists’ disgust in the Entretiens.
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