La bataille d'Arbelles

1664–1690

Post: Premier peintre du Roi

1666

The French Academy in Rome is founded

With Colbert he founds the Academy of France in Rome as a base for promising young artists, who live and study there for a set period at the crown's expense.

1667

Lectures at the Academy and the “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns”

He opens a cycle of lectures at the Royal Academy on the masterpieces of classical painting, thereby joining the famous seventeenth-century debate between the adherents of classicism and of the Baroque, known as the “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns”. In the Academy he defends the “Poussinists” against the “Rubenists” and the primacy of strict drawing over colour; his chief opponent there was Pierre Mignard.

1668

He becomes rector of the Academy

From 1668 he is rector of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, remaining the dominant figure in the institution.

1669

He takes charge of the decoration of the remodelled Versailles

Louis XIV decides to renovate Versailles completely, then still a tiny palace, and to turn it into an opulent residence where he could receive his subjects and foreign diplomats; Le Brun is put in charge of its decoration down to the smallest details of arrangement and presentation.