Lebrun was as able a courtier as he was a good painter.  The clever arrangement of his pictures, the richness and brilliancy of his talent, his faculty for applying art to industry, secured him with Louis XIV. a sway which lasted as long as his life.  He was first painter to the king; he was director of the Gobelins and of the academy of painting.  “He let nothing be done by the other artists but according to his own designs and suggestions.  The worker in tapestry, the decorative painter, the statuary, the goldsmith, took their models from him:  all came from him, all flowed from his brain, all bore his imprint.”  The painter followed the king’s ideas, being entirely after his own heart.  For fourteen years he worked for Louis XIV., representing his life and his conquests, at Versailles; painting for the Louvre the victories of Alexander, which were engraved almost immediately by Audran and Edelinck.  He was jealous of the royal favor, sensitive and haughty towards artists, honestly concerned for the king’s glory and for the tasks confided to himself.  The growing reputation of Mignard, whom Louvois had brought back from Rome, troubled and disquieted Lebrun.  In vain did the king encourage him.  Lebrun, already ill, said in the presence of Louis XIV. that fine pictures seem to become finer after the painter’s death.  “Do not you be in a hurry to die, M. Lebrun,” said the king; “we esteem your pictures now quite as highly as posterity can.”

[Illustration:  Perrault 678]

The small gallery at Versailles had been intrusted to Mignard.  Lebrun withdrew to Montmorency, where he died in 1690, jealous of Mignard at the end as he had been of Lesueur at the outset of his life.  Mignard became first painter to the king.  He painted the ceiling of Val-de-Grace, which was celebrated by Moliere; but it was as a painter of portraits that he excelled in France.  “M.  Mignard does them best,” said Le Poussin not long before, with lofty good nature, “though his heads are all paint, without force or character.”  To Mignard succeeded Rigaud as portrait painter, worthy to preserve the features of Bossuet and Fenelon.  The unity of organization, the brilliancy of style, the imposing majesty which the king’s taste had everywhere stamped about him upon art as well as upon literature, were by this time beginning to decay simultaneously with the old age of Louis XIV., with the reverses of his arms, and the increasing gloominess of his court; the artists who had illustrated his reign were dying one after another, as well as the orators and the poets; the sculptor James Sarazin had been gone some time; Puget and the Anguiers were dead, as well as Mansard, Perrault, and Le Notre; Girardon had but a few months to live; only Coysevox was destined to survive the king, whose statue he had many a time moulded.  The great age was disappearing slowly and sadly, throwing out to the last some noble gleams, like the aged king who had constantly served as its centre and guide, like olden France, which he had crowned with its last and its most splendid wreath.