NANTEUIL, Robert
(b. 1623, Reims, d. 1678, Paris)

Louis XIV

1664
Engraving
British Museum, London

Robert Nanteuil is in engraving what Philippe de Champaigne was in painting, and it is no chance that he should have engraved so many heads after his Flemish contemporary. Technically he was a master of his craft, and his original engraved portraits reveal an acute power of observation. His works provide the most complete view which remains to us of the great figures of the middle of the seventeenth century.