This article focuses on the pictorial decoration of one of the principal rooms of the Petits Cabinets du Roi at Versailles. The Gallery, embellished with nine paintings of exotic hunts, brought ...together the talents of the painters Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater, François Boucher, Carle Vanloo, Charles Parrocel, and Jean-François de Troy. The study traces some of the iconographic sources of the series to works by Rubens, Johannes Stradanus, Antonio Tempesta, and Bartolomeus van Lochom. Although each painting reflects the individual character and style of its author, the ensemble possesses continuity and visual harmony. It stands as an important monument to the taste of Louis XV.
Of all the paintings executed by Jacques-Louis David, probably the best known is the Oath of the Horatii (Fig. 1). During its day it created a tremendous stir among both amateur art lovers and ...critics. While there have been papers written on the origins of the theme of the Oath of the Horatii and the handling of the composition, the evolution of the painting from its genesis to its completion has not as yet been thoroughly investigated. The rational, creative, and thinking processes of this famous Neoclassic French painter are significant. In the present paper we shall attempt to study the reasons for the successive changes David made in the preliminary sketches of the work.
