MAROT, Daniel I
(b. 1661, Paris, d. 1752, Den Haag)

Biography

French architect, designer and engraver, active in the Netherlands, part of a family of artists, son of Jean Marot I. Daniel Marot I was a successful engraver in Paris, until anti-Protestant legislation obliged him to emigrate to the Netherlands, where he became principal designer to William of Orange.

Daniel Marot I probably trained with his father, whom he assisted with the publication of the Grand Marot, a monumental series of engravings of contemporary French architecture. Some of the 196 prints in this series, such as the view of the front of the royal abbey of Val-de-Grâce in Paris, were signed by Daniel Marot.

From 1677 he worked independently as an engraver, making engravings for such artists as Jean Le Pautre and Jean Bérain I (1640-1711), and his collaboration with them, particularly with Bérain, had a lasting influence on his work. Bérain, who in 1674 was appointed Dessinateur du Cabinet et de la Chambre du Roi, was responsible in this capacity for the decorations at all court celebrations and ceremonies; Marot made prints from some of his designs, such as those for Lully's opera Le Triomphe de l'amour (1681) and for the funeral in 1683 of Queen Marie-Thérese, wife of Louis XIV. It is probable that at a later stage in his career Marot himself worked as royal designer.

Daniel Marot's son, Daniel Marot II, worked as a decorative painter on a number of his father's projects.