Charles Le Brun

(1619 - 1690)
 

Charles Le Brun was a French painter, physiognomist, art theorist, and a director of several art schools of his time. As court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him "the greatest French artist of all time", he was a dominant figure in 17th-century French art and much influenced by Nicolas Poussin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Le_Brun

Everhard Jabach 1618-1695 and his family, ca. 1660.
1660
Oil on canvas
280 × 328 cm
The Met
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/626692

This painting combines the domestic intimacy and descriptive richness of Dutch and Flemish art, which Jabach collected and admired, with the measured formal organization and allegorical allusions characteristic of French portraiture. Everhard Jabach (1618–1695), dressed in black, is seated in the company of his wife and their four children. Although Le Brun presents an arresting portrayal of each sitter, much of the composition is given over to Jabach and the emblems of his cultural interests and, through the artist’s reflection seen as a self-portrait in the mirror, his association with France’s leading painter.



Detail