Henry Avice, un collectionneur du Grand Siècle: "Les Berges d'Arcadie" de Nicolas Poussin en leur milieu

• Gabriel Batalla-Lagleyre ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Paris-Sorbonne

     University of Paris-Sorbonne

     París, Francia

     
• Localización: Revue de l'art, ISSN 0035-1326, Nº. 192, 2016, págs. 31-40
• Idioma: francés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • For the most forgotten today, Henry Avice (ca. 1615-1680), called the chevalier Avice, had a sufficiently established reputation in the 17th century art world, so that Pierre-Jean Mariette could say of him, well after his death, that he had been one of the best connoisseurs of his time. By profession an engineer, his interest in art was significantly expressed all his life. A fairly talented amateur artist, his aptitude as a draughtsman, as an engraver and as a painter earned him the enviable situation of drawing master to Louis XIV. Well placed in the royal circle, close to several important collectors, he himself collected works of art. Owner of some fifty paintings, among which were masterpiece by Veronese and by Poussin as well as numerous landscapes of lesser interest, and several hundred drawings, which stressed his own practical and even pedagogical tendency, Avice owned a chosen selection of works of art, which, through the study of the multiplicity of its facets, is worthy of interest for the understanding of Parisian collecting during the third quarter of the century. Above all it is appropriate to explore the relation between the chevalier and Nicolas Poussin: Avice, who could have met the master during the long years he spent in Italy, was one of the first engravers of the painter's work, and within the limits of his modest means, a fervent collector of his works. His posthumous inventory thus reveals that he was the first known owner of the famous "Berger d'Arcadie".