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In France. 573 Magny, near Pontoise, went early in life to Paris, where he studied under Boulogne. His pictures are carefully composed and harmoniously coloured. At the time that, in order to flatter the pompous taste of Louis XIV., Jouvenet was exaggerating the exaggerations of Le Brun, there was one artist who religiously observed the worship of the beautiful. This was Jean Baptiste Santerre. Like Le Sueur before him, and Prud'hon after him, he escaped from academic tyranny, as well as from the slavery of the court. He sought for real greatness more than for fame or fortune, and found it, far from theatrical effect, in delicacy and grace. Santerre, in a tolerably long life, completed but few works, and the Louvre has only suc- ceeded in obtaining two, Susannah at the Bath, and a Female portrait, which seem to make the link in the chain uniting Correggio to Prud'hon. To bring into one group the best portrait painters of the age to which Louis XIV. has given his name, we must go back a few years, and commence with Pierre Mignard (1610 — 1695), who, although born at Troyes in Champagne, was called the " Roman," because after having studied under Simon Vouet, he passed twenty- two years at Rome. Mignard was not merely a portrait painter ; he also painted historic pictures, and in the dome of Val-de-Grace frescoes larger in size than that of Correggio in the duomo of Parma. He succeeded Le Brun in the office of king's painter; and was made a Chevalier de Saint-Michel, and chancellor of the Academy. He entered into direct rivalry with Le Brun in a Family of Darius at the feet of Alexander, now in the Hermitage ; and in the Louvre we may see the charming Madonna with the Grapes, brought from Italy, in which he imitated