The Holy Family With St. John the Baptist
by Charles Le Brun, ca. 1648-1650, red chalk with stylus outline, 121/4 x 101/2. Prat Collection, Paris, France.


With a foot in both the classical and the Baroque eras, Charles Le Brun (1619~1690) was an artist who found success early and had the political skills to remain a dominant figure in the French court and the Academie until very late in life. Le Brun was a student of Vouet and a friend of Poussin, and his compositions were built on basic, simple masses, as in classicism. And yet his figures could bristle with the energy of Baroque art, as shown in the serpentine form in Study for Mucius Scaevola Before Porsenna. Le Brun did more than anyone to establish a homogenous French style of art for three decades in the 17th century. He accomplished this through both policy and paintingóLe Brun founded the French Academy in Rome, and by the 166os any significant commission was assumed his for the taking.

The two drawings shown here ably illustrate how Le Brun's style pragmatically changed with the times-with both artistic and material success. "One image shows the simple conception of all the forms, very balanced and posed like a Raphael, and the other shows a figure struggling so hard," marvels Rubenstein. "Even without the indication of the corpse, which this figure is lifting, we feel how much effort he has to exert to hold up this heavy weight." Le Brun's surety with drawing instruments was legendary; one myth asserted that this son of a sculptor began drawing in the cradle.