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It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and daring, qualities of which the world has ever need. Foucquet's factory lasted three years.
Stippling was brought to its ultimate perfection by Don Giulio Clovio, but it is supposed to have been first practised by Antonio de Holanda. One of Jehan Foucquet's assistants was Jehan Bourdichon. There is an interesting memorandum extant, relating to a piece of illumination which Bourdichon had accomplished.
Pursuit of knowledge in regard to the Gobelins factory leads us through ways the most flowery and ways the most stormy, through sunshine and through the dark, right up to our own times. Collection of Wm. See Loriquet, "Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims." Colbert saw the wisdom of taking direction for the king, Louis XIV, of the looms of Foucquet's château.
He had coveted riches and elegance and had possessed himself of them; had collected in his palace the most beautiful works of art of his day or those of a previous time. After Mazarin came Foucquet, the great, the iconoclastic, the unfortunate. It was at Foucquet's estate of Vaux near Maincy that this tapestry factory of short duration was established and soon destroyed.
In effect, it was a gathering of exquisite beauties and charming men, lost in light-hearted play; in reality, it proved to be an incitive to envy and malice, and a means to ruin. Among the observant guests at this wondrous fête champêtre was Colbert, young, ambitious, keen. He was not slow to see the holes in Foucquet's fabric, nor were others. And so, whispers came to the king.
Foucquet's downfall is the old story of envy, man trying to climb by ruining his superiors, hating those whose magnificence approaches their own. Foucquet's unequalled entertainment of the king was made to count as naught.
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