Full Name: Fernández, Justino
Gender: male
Date Born: 1904
Home Country/ies: Mexico
A Guide to Mexican Art: from its Beginnings to the Present. Translated by Joshua Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Full Name: Fernandez, Dominique
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: unknown
Subject Area(s): art theory, biography (general genre), Italian (culture or style), psychoanalysis, and psychology
psychoanalytic method of art history; biography of Michelangelo
L’Arbre jusqu’aux racine. Psychanalyse et création. Paris, 1972.
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 323
psychoanalytic method of art history; biography of Michelangelo
Full Name: Fergusson, Peter J.
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1934
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Medieval (European), and sculpture (visual works)
Wellesley College Feldberg Professor of Art; architectural historian of the Medieval era, particularly Cistercian architecture. Fergusson was the son of Alfred Milnthorpe Fergusson (1894-1970), a British cleric for St. Peter’s Church in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, and Ursula Mabel Fergusson. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Michigan State University in 1960. He entered Harvard University for graduate work, achieving his M.A.in 1961. There the lectures of Eduard F. Sekler introduced him to Cistercian architecture which would become a life-long passion. At Harvard he also worked closely James S. Ackerman and John P. Coolidge of the Fogg Museum, who, as he whimsically wrote, “tried to make an architectural historian” out of him (Fergusson, 1984). Nearing the completion of his dissertation on twelfth-century Cistercian architecture, Fergusson was hired as an assistant professor first by McGill University in 1965 and then Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, in 1966. His Ph.D. was granted the following year with a dissertation written under Kenneth John Conant. Fergusson married Lilian Armstrong, also a professor of art at Wellesley. Fergusson published widely thought largely in article form, In 1970 Fergusson was awarded the Reginald Taylor Prize and Medal by the British Archaeological Association for his article on Roche Abbey. He chaired the Boston area Save Venice Foundation between 1980 and 1986. His first book, on Cistercian architecture, for Architecture of Solitude, appeared in 1984 and awarded the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award by the College Art Association of America. He was named Theodora and Stanley Feldberg Professor of Art in 1987. Fergusson was a spring resident at the American Academy in Rome, allowing him to publish is second tome, Rievaulx Abbey, 2001, which received the Alice Davis Hitchcock prize by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. For the 125th anniversary of the founding of Wellesley, he co-authored The Landscape and Architecture of Wellesley College, in 2001. As an emeritus professor, Fergusson wrote Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the Age of Becket, which appeared in 2011.
[dissertation:] English Twelfth Century Cistercian Church Architecture. Harvard, 1967; Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984; Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Memory, Architecture. New Haven, CT: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2000; Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the Age of Becket. New Haven, CT: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2011.
“Acknowledgements.” Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. xxii-xxiii; “Peter Fergusson.” Perspectives for an Architecture of Solitude : Essays on Cistercians, Art and Architecture in Honour of Peter Fergusson. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004, pp. ix-x; “Peter Fergusson.” Wellesley Public Affairs Profiles, http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Profile/af/pfergusson
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Wellesley College Feldberg Professor of Art; architectural historian of the Medieval era, particularly Cistercian architecture. Fergusson was the son of Alfred Milnthorpe Fergusson (1894-1970), a British cleric for St. Peter’s Church in St. Albans
Full Name: Fergusson, James
Gender: male
Date Born: 22 January 1808
Date Died: 09 January 1886
Place Born: Ayr, Scotland
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Assyrian, Christianity, Early Western World, Hindustani (culture or style), Indian (South Asian), Levantine (culture or style), Mesopotamian (culture or style), mosques (buildings), Near Eastern (Early Western World), Persian (culture), religious buildings, religious structures, and sculpture (visual works)
Scottish architectural historian, active in India. Fergusson was born in the town of Ayr, on the west coast of Scotland. James was the second son of Dr. William Fergusson, who served as the Inspector General of Military Hospitals — a role which required much overseas travel. James received his early education at the Royal High School in Edinburgh and, later, in Hounslow, outside London. In 1829 he travelled to Bengal, India, where his older brother lived, before moving to Calcutta where he earned his fortune working as an indigo merchant. This new-found wealth allowed Fergusson to travel extensively throughout India between 1835 and 1842. It was during this period that Fergusson personally carried out a wide and intimate architectural survey of the nation, which would go on to form the basis of his later writings.
Fergusson’s first book, The Rock-cut Temples of India, which examined some of the country’s earliest architectural forms, was published in 1845. This was followed, in 1847, by An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem which argued that the Mosque of Omar was the true site of the Holy Sepulchre. It wasn’t until the publication of his 1848 survey, Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan — illustrated with lithographs prepared on the basis of Fergusson’s own in-situ drawings, produced with the aid of a camera lucida — that the impact of the author’s travels across India became apparent. Following his earlier interest in the architecture of mosques, Fergusson then looked westwards towards Egypt and Syria, publishing The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, an Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture in 1851.
In 1855 and 1862 Fergusson produced two survey texts that sought to establish architecture as a discipline in its own right, distinct from archaeology. The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture was the first comprehensive history of the discipline written in English, followed by History of the Modern Styles of Architecture. After the publication of Fergusson’s The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Restored in 1862 — which extolled the beauty of Greek sculpture relative to other traditions — the two earlier survey texts were combined into a single volume, under the title History of Architecture in All Countries from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, and published between 1865-1867.
Fergusson’s thesis that Indian architecture could function as the most useful source for investigating the nation’s history and culture was most clearly expounded in his 1867 book, On the Study of Indian Architecture. This was followed, in 1868, by Fergusson’s only work on Indian sculpture, Tree and Serpent Worship, which also sought to use the works under investigation to draw inferences about India’s ethnology and culture. Fergusson completed a third installment of the survey compendium that began with the Illustrated Handbook, entitled History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, in 1876.
Fergusson always considered the Indian forms he encountered to be inferior to European architecture of the Classical era. The author’s final publication in 1884, Archaeology in India, with Special Reference to the Works of Babu Rajendralal Mitra blatantly exposed this cluster of prejudices. The book centered on an attack on the work of Bengali historian Dr Rajendralal Mitra (1822-1891) who had challenged the Scot’s contention that stone architecture was introduced to India by the Greeks.
In spite of Fergusson’s belief in the superiority of European styles, he did not impose these standards on the Indian architecture he encountered. Rather, he relied exclusively on architectural evidence in his detailed examinations. Criticizing much European architecture built after 1500 as overly imitative, Fergusson found a lesson for contemporary British construction in the “living tradition” of Indian architecture.
According to Fergusson’s theory, British architects could benefit from attending to a building’s “natural” character — analogous to a plant growing from the soil — which emerged in an ideal alignment of form, function, materials, and common sense. “However blundering, at times insensitive, at times self contradictory, his writing may be, at the back of his mind there is the vision, vague and blurred no doubt, but doggedly persistent, of an architecture proper to an industrial democracy” (Craig).
Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Shane Morrissy
Scottish architectural historian, active in India. Fergusson was born in the town of Ayr, on the west coast of Scotland. James was the second son of Dr. William Fergusson, who served as the Inspector General of Military Hospitals — a role which re
Full Name: Ferguson, John Calvin
Gender: male
Date Born: 1866
Date Died: 1945
Place Born: Lonsdale, Ontario, Canada
Place Died: Clifton Springs, Ontario, NY, USA
Home Country/ies: Canada
Subject Area(s): American (North American), Asian, Chinese (culture or style), Confucianism, and Song (Chinese culture, style, and period)
Career(s): art collectors
Early American scholar of Chinese art, collector and procurer for American art museums; Chinese governmental adviser. Ferguson was the son of John Ferguson and Catherine Matilda Pomeroy (Ferguson). His father was a Methodist minister and his mother a schoolteacher. The family traveled frequently because of the father’s work. Ferguson attended Albert College in Ontario, Canada and then Boston University, where he graduated in 1886. He was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal church shortly thereafter and, in 1887, married Mary Elizabeth Wilson. His church posting was to a Methodist mission in Central China. There Ferguson founded a Methodist school, Huiwen Shuyuan (later Nanjing University), which, under his direction, developed established a curriculum along western lines, including schools of medicine and theology. The riots in China in 1891 caused a permanent mental condition on his wife and the pay for the college was so poor that Ferguson returned to missionary work in1897. Together with the industrialist Sheng Xuanhuai, Feguson founded a second school, the Nanyang Gongxue, Shanghai, (later Jiaotong University). His educational zeal and belief in education led him to edit the newspaper Sin Wan Bao in 1899. He returned to Boston where, in 1902, he was awarded a Ph.D. from Boston University writing his dissertation on the topic The Confucian Renaissance in the Sung Dynasty. Named honorary secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society (North China branch) he edited their scholarly journal. The growing nationalism of China and the unpopularity of foreign leaders of Chinese universities caused Ferguson to resigned as president of the Nanyang school. Sheng Xuanhuai, secured for him a position of foreign secretary to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. From 1903 onward, he held various official nad unofficial advisorships in successive Chinese governments and chief secretary of the Imperial Chinese Railway Administration (to 1907), Chinese representative to the United States. He acted as a buyer of Chinese art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. In 1913 the Met elected him a fellow in perpetuity. When the Qing dynasty was deposed in 1912, Ferguson was the only western scholar invited to participate on the committee examining the art treasures of the imperial palace for the Palace Museum in Beijing. He presented the Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918, published the following year as Outlines of Chinese Art. Ferguson, who had already been an adviser to the Chinese Department of State (1915-1917) continued to advise President Xu Shichang during the warlord era in Beijing (1917-1928). In 1921 he again returned to political service as an adviser for the Chinese delegation to the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armaments. He co-founded the China Journal of Science and Art which he edited between 1923 until 1931. After 1927 he acted as adviser to the Nationalist party government (Guomindang) of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) in Nanjing. As tensions mounted near World War II, Ferguson elected to remain in Beijing, even after the Japanese invasion in 1937. In 1943 the Japanese decided to inter U. S. and British nationals still in China, but Ferguson spent his interment in a dormitory in the British Embassy when he was exchanged along with other prisoners. The lengthy trip to the United States through Hong Kong, Viet Nam, South Africa, and Brazil, (he made it back to New York by the end of 1943) took a toll on his health. He and his wife enter the Clifton Springs, New York, sanitarium where he died shortly before the end of Asian theater conflict of World War II. His students included Lidai Zhulu Hua Mu. The catalog created by his students of the paintings of successive dynasties was commonly known as “Ferguson’s Index” (1934). Ferguson was one of the early western art historians of Chinese art history from the North America. He wrote and researched before modern archaeological finds and methods had established an accurate dating system for objects. His wide knowledge of classical Chinese texts, combined with personal interpretations, resulted in errors in his art authentication. Because the field was largely limited to his own findings, he was often defensive of dissenting views. A bitter dispute erupted, for example with the eminent scholar Herbert A. Giles, (of the Wade-Giles Chinese character transliteration formula). His acquisition skills were utilized by the Freer Gallery of Art (Smithsonian Institution, Washgington, D. C.) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in addition to Chicago and New York. His personal collection of art, including bronzes, scrolls, paintings, and jades, were largely donated to Nanjing University in 1935. His collections forms the core of several art museums within the People’s Republic of China The Jiaotong University collection exists in two separate institutions, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Xian Jiao Tong University, both established in 1956.
Chinese Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927; Outlines of Chinese art. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/University of Chicago press, 1919; Survey of Chinese art. Shanghai, China: The Commercial Press, 1939; Special exhibition of Chinese paintings from the collection of the Museum: catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1914;[“Ferguson’s Index”] Li dai zhu lu hua mu [Catalog of the Recorded Paintings of Successive Dynasties]. 6 vols. Nanjing Shi: Jin ling da xue Zhong guo wen hua yan jiu suo, 1934.
Lawton, Thomas. “John C. Ferguson: A Fellow Feeling of Fallibility,” Orientations 27 (1996): 65-76; ” ” New York Times 4 Aug. 1945; Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 73 (1948): v-xiv; Clark, Peter Yuichi. “Ferguson, John Calvin.” American National Biography.
Early American scholar of Chinese art, collector and procurer for American art museums; Chinese governmental adviser. Ferguson was the son of John Ferguson and Catherine Matilda Pomeroy (Ferguson). His father was a Methodist minister and his mothe
Full Name: Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1853
Date Died: 1908
Place Born: Salem, Essex, MA, USA
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Chinese (culture or style), Early Historical Japanese, East Asian, Japanese (culture or style), and South Asian
Career(s): curators
Curator of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, 1890-96. Fenollosa was the son of Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa and Mary Silsbee (Fenollosa). He attended Hacker Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Salem High School before graduating from Harvard in the class of 1874. He continued study at Cambridge University in philosophy and divinity. After a year at the art school at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, during which time he married Lizzie Goodhue Millett, he traveled to Japan in 1878 (at the invitation of American zoologist and Orientalist Edward Sylvester Morse) to teach political economy and philosophy at the Imperial University at Tokyo. He studied the indigenous ancient temples, shrines and art treasures, many of which were in a neglected state. He helped revive the Nihonga (Japanese) style of painting together with Japanese artists Kanō Hōgai (1828-1888) and Hashimoto Gahō (1835-1908). After eight years at the University, he helped found the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy and the Imperial Museum acting as its director in 1888. He converted to Buddhism, and changed his name to Tei-Shin. He also adopted the name Kanō Yeitan Masanobu, suggesting that he had been admitted into the ancient Japanese art academy of the Kanō. Among Fenollosa’s accomplishments were the first inventory of Japan’s national treasures, and in so doing he discovered ancient Chinese scrolls brought to Japan by traveling Zen monks centuries earlier. The Emperor of Japan decorated him with the orders of the Rising Sun and the Sacred Mirror. In 1886 he sold the art collection he had amassed to Boston physician Charles Goddard Weld (1857-1911) on the condition that it go the the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1890 he returned to Boston to be curator of the department of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There Fenollosa organized the first exhibition of Chinese painting at the MFA in 1894 and developed the Department into a training center for generations of scholars. His public divorce and immediate remarriage to the writer Mary McNeill Scott (1865-1954) in 1895 outraged the Boston community, leading to his dismissal from the Museum in 1896. He was replaced by his student and fellow buying companion, Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913). Fenollosa published Masters of Ukioye, a historical account of Japanese paintings and color prints which were exhibited at the New York Fine Arts Building, in 1896. In 1897 he journeyed back to Japan to be professor of English literature at the Imperial Normal School at Tokyo. After three years he returned to the United States to write and lecture on Asia. After his death, his wife compiled the two-volume Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art from his notes. His literary executor, Ezra Pound, compiled from notes and manuscripts, Cathay (1915); Certain Noble Plays of Japan (1916); and ‘Noh’, or, Accomplishment, a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan (1916). His last years were spent creating a collection for the Detroit railroad baron Charles Lang Freer, the basis of what is now the Freer Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washgington, D. C. Fenollosa brought a curator’s enthusiasm to the study of Asian art in the United States. He inspired Boston collectors to venture into the relatively new field of Far Eastern art, endowing the Boston Museum of Fine Art with one of the earliest and best Asian art collections in the United States. His books were widely read, but unfortunately are full of errors. Epochs, for example, was completed from notes after his death by his earnest, but less-knowledgeable, wife. The study of Japanese art in the United States was at such a dawning point that much information taken as correct by scholars has since been corrected. Assessments of Fenollosa’s lasting contribution to the study of Asian art have varied greatly. Estimations that he both discovered the subject and that he made no important contribution to it exist. Fenollosa, together with Weld and another society physician-turned collector, William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) formed what were known as the “Boston Orientalists.”
Epochs of Chinese & Japanese Art: an Outline History of East Asiatic Design. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912; Instigations of Ezra Pound, Together with an Essay on the Chinese Written Character, by Ernest Fenollosa. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920; ‘Noh,’ or, Accomplishment, a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1917; East and West: The Discovery of American and Other Poems New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1893; The Masters of Ukioye: a Complete Historical Description of Japanese Paintings and Color Prints of the Genre School. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1896.
Fenollosa, Mary McNeill. “Preface.” Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: an Outline History of East Asiatic Design. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912; Warner, Langdon. “Ernest Francisco Fenollosa.” Dictionary of American Biography. vol. 6. New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1931, pp. 325-26; Kurihara Shinichi. Fuenorosa to Meiji bunka. Tokyo: Rikugei Shobo, Showa 43,1968; Chisolm, Lawrence W. Fenollosa: the Far East and American Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963; Brooks, Van Wyck. Fenollosa and His Circle; with Other Essays in Biography. New York: Dutton, 1962; Tepfer, Diane. “Enest Fenollosa.” The Dictionary of Art 10: 887; “Fun facts: ‘The Boston Orientalists’. Boston Museum of Fine Art, http://www.boston.com/mfa/chinese/orientalist.htm .
Curator of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, 1890-96. Fenollosa was the son of Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa and Mary Silsbee (Fenollosa). He attended Hacker Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Salem High School befor
Full Name: Fenaille, Maurice
Gender: male
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: unknown
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): French (culture or style)
Career(s): archivists and researchers
archival research in French art history
état général des tapisseries de la Manufacture des Gobelins depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours (1600-1900). 5 vols. 1903-1929.
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 482
archival research in French art history
Full Name: Félibien, Michel
Gender: male
Date Born: 14 September 1664
Date Died: 25 September 1719
Place Born: Chartres, Centre-Val de Loire, France
Place Died: Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Centre-Val de Loire, France
Home Country/ies: France
Institution(s): Congrégation de Saint-Maur
Benedictine Monk and architectural historian from France. Born into a prominent family in Coutainville near Chartres, France, in 1665, Michel was the son of André Félibien (1619-1695), historiographer of the Academy of Painting (1666) and secretary of the Academy of Architecture (1671). His brother, Jean-François, became an architect and historiographer. Michel Félibien became a Benedictine Monk in the Congregation of Saint-Maur in 1683. Also known as Maurists, the congregation were renowned for their erudite scholarship.
In 1706, Félibien published Histoire de l’Abbaye Royale de Saint-Denys en France (History of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denys in France) — one of the first major structures built in what came to be known as the Gothic style — up until the reign of Louis XIV. Part of the significance of Félibien’s eight-volume text resides in the author’s emphasis upon situating his discussion of the Cathedral within its historical context. The second half of the book, which includes six engraved plates of various treasures housed within, provides a detailed account of the interior and exterior of the structure, including the treasury. The treasury, which played a significant role in the ceremonies of the French monarchy, is now largely known only through his account. Félibien next began researching the history of Paris, which appeared as Histoire de la ville de Paris in 1712. The five-volume was left unfinished at his death but completed by his fellow Benedictine, Guy Alexis Lobineau, Dom Lobineau (1666–1727) in 1725. Following the Maurists tradition, he emphasised reliable sources as the key to ascertaining “truth.” Approaching his work critically, Félibien “swept aside the famous … legends” to provide a clear and accurate history of the subjects he explored (Vaivre).
Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Shane Morrissy
Benedictine Monk and architectural historian from France. Born into a prominent family in Coutainville near Chartres, France, in 1665, Michel was the son of André Félibien (1619-1695), historiographer of the Academy of Pai
Full Name: Félibien, Jean-François
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: c. 1658
Date Died: 1733
Home Country/ies: France
Son of art historian and theorist André Félibien. First theoretician in France to address the gothic style “Disseration touchant l’architecture antique & l’architecture gothique” (Bazin). He termed Romanesque architecture “gothique ancien” and later architecture “gothique modern” (present gothic architecture).
Recueil historique de la vie et des ouvrages des plus célèbres architectes. Paris: Chez Florentin et Pierre Delaulne, 1690; Les plans et les descriptions de deux des plus belles maisons de campagne de Pliné le consul, avec des remarques sur tous ses bâtimens, et une dissertation touchant l’architecture antique & l’architecture gothique. Paris: F. & P. Delaulne, 1699; Les plans et les descriptions de deux des plus belles maisons de campagne de Pline le consul, avec des remarques sur tous les bâtimens et une dissertation touchant l’architecture antique et l’architecture gothique. Amsterdam: Aux depens d’Estienne Roger, 1706.
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 111 [dates incorrectly assigned to his father]; Skliar-Piguet, Alexandre. “Félibien, André, Sieur des Avaux et de Jàversy.” Dictionary of Art 10: 867 (entry on father).
Son of art historian and theorist André Félibien. First theoretician in France to address the gothic style “Disseration touchant l’architecture antique & l’architecture gothique” (Bazin). He termed Romanesque architecture
Full Name: Félibien, André
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: May 1619
Date Died: 11 June 1695
Place Born: Chartres, Centre-Val de Loire, France
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and Italian (culture or style)
Career(s): art critics
Critic and historian of Italian and French art and royal art collections. Félibien was educated primarily in Paris. In 1647 he was appointed secretary to Marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil (1594-1655), the ambassador to the Holy See, Rome, under Louis XIV. During his service to the ambassador, Félibien spent two years in Rome, where he studied ancient monuments and the works of living artists such as Claude Lorrain, Pietro da Cortona, and Nicolas Poussin, whom he personally met. He returned to France in 1649 and married. Nicolas Fouquet, marquis de Belle-Isle, (1615-1680), the Superintendent of Finances in France, was impressed by his ability and Félibien dedicated his de L’origine de la peinture, 1660, a historical analysis of painting modeled after the writings of Giorgio Vasari to Fouquet. However, when Fouquet became the target of a financial scandal, Félibien was forced to flee Paris as well. He was recalled by the Fouquet’s successor, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683). He became a founding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres in 1663, and wrote several articles documenting works in royal collections. Through his position, he exerted great influence on the policies of the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture. His appointment by Colbert as historiographer of the Bâtiments du Roi in 1666 expanded his role as a critic and an arts administrator. Félibien began immediately to publish a ten-volume history of painting from antiquity to the17th century, entitled Entretiens sur la vie et les ouvrages des plus excellences peintres anciens et modernes,1666-1668. The work was intended to be a history of art from the antique to Poussin, but Félibien added two final parts containing more contemporary artists. He was named secretary to the newly-founded Academy of Architecture in 1671 and in 1673 keeper of the cabinet of antiques in the palace of Brion. In 1679, Félibien published his Noms des peintres les plus célèbres a dictionary of of artists. His two sons, Michel Félibien, a monk, and Jean-François Félibien, an architect, also became scholars of French art and architecture. Félibien, owing to his position, was the orthodox voice of France, yet succeeded in original judgments on artists. Even his earliest work, Des principes was less about theoretics (principles) than it was a description of working methods. From this first, Félibien shows himself interested in facts–the bits of history–as much as postulation. Entretiens shows Félibien to be seriously concerned with establishing an approach to art history (Pace). His writings on art history are credited (by Bazin) to have rekindled art criticism in France.
Lettres familieres de mr Conrad, a mr Felibien. Paris: Chez Claude Barbin, 1681; Des principes de l’architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture, et des autres arts qui en dependent. Avec vn dictionnaire des termes propres à chacun de ces arts. Paris: J. B. Coignard, 1676; Noms des peintres les plus célèbres et les plus connus anciens et modernes. Paris: 1679; Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens paintres anciens et modernes …. 5 pts. Paris: Simon Bernard, 1666, 1672,1679, 1685,1688; Recueil de descriptions de peintures et dáutres ouvrages faits pour le roy. Paris: Chez Florentin & P. Delaulne, 1689.
Pace, Claire. Félibien’s Life of Poussin. London: A. Zwemmer, 1981; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 55; Skliar-Piguet, Alexandre. “Félibien, André, Sieur des Avaux et de Jàversy.” Dictionary of Art 24: 805-806.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Critic and historian of Italian and French art and royal art collections. Félibien was educated primarily in Paris. In 1647 he was appointed secretary to Marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil (1594-1655), the ambassador to the Holy See, Rome, under Louis XI