Rivalry in Print exhibition reception - CANCELED

March 2 – April 25, Center Art Gallery, gallery 2

Rivalry in Print: Art and Competition in Seventeenth-Century France uses a remarkable bound volume of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prints by Étienne Baudet, Gérard Audran, and Charles Louis Simonneau after the great rivals Charles Le Brun and Pierre Mignard to uncover a world of artistic competition in seventeenth-century Paris. Examining principally the rivalries between Le Brun and Mignard; the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and the Maîtrise; and the more complex competition between the printmaker Gérard Audran and the artists whose works he reproduced, Rivalry in Print also places this unique volume of prints within the historiography of the artist’s monograph. Bound in the 1720s and loosely connected to the royal printing effort known as the Cabinet du Roi, the volume’s title, Grandes Pièces de Mr Le Brun et Mignard, places a curious emphasis on the works of two great artists and rivals instead of the grand collections of Louis XIV, an intriguing example of the art-historical sensibility in its very early stages of development. The exhibition is organized by Calvin University alumna Julia Bouwkamp, under the direction of Art History Professor Craig Hanson with assistance from Art History major Mary Najmon. The volume that inspired the scholarship and exhibition was recently gifted by a Calvin alumnus who also generously funded both the conservation of the volume and the coinciding exhibition research and development.