Bernard Picart Biography
Bernard Picart (Paris, 11 June 1673 – Amsterdam, 8 May 1733) was a French engraver. He was one of the most acclaimed engravers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bernard began his business at the age of fifteen and established himself for his ability since his early youth. He was a son of art. His father Etienne (1632-1721), known as the Roman, was well known for the excellence of his drawing and was his first teacher together with renowned artists of the time such as Sébastien Leclerc II In the short biographical sketch written by his second wife, Anna Vincent, and published in Amsterdam immediately after the artist's death, we remember the attention that the famous court painter Charles Le Brun paid to the artist, then eighteen years old, when he received the prize from the Academy of Fine Arts. He moved in Antwerp in 1696, and spent a year in Amsterdam before returning to France in 1698 due to the death of his mother and his father's ailments. After his wife's death in 1708, he moved permanently to the Dutch capital in 1711, where he converted to Protestantism and married again. It was an intense period of artistic and intellectual life between Picart and Marchand. The artist frequented Marchand and the circle of friends who gathered in his atelier in Paris. In those years Picart, like his publisher friend, made important artistic and religious choices by sharing criticism of superstitions, credulity and legitimized manipulations, both in the field of politics and in the theological field, in the name of faith and true religion. An intellectual partnership that remained unchanged even during the two characters' Dutch years. Picart and Marchand, moreover, had left Paris together and, upon their arrival in the Netherlands, had at least initially shared a home. In this period of time Picart lent his happy hand to illustrate the books of the authors who turned to him. It represented physiognomies, architecture, episodes and anecdotes narrated in the written pages, historical subjects, numismatics, portraits, costume scenes, gallant pastimes and chivalric activities that were so popular with the French, Dutch, Belgians and Swedes. Most of his works were collected in a kind of illustrative book, which included the Bible and Ovid. His most important work is Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, which appeared between 1723 and 1743. Jonathan I. Israel called Cérémonies "an immense effort to record the religious rites and beliefs of the world in all their diversity in the most objective and authentic way possible". The original French edition of the Cérémonies includes ten books of prints and texts. Israel also states that Picart left Paris with Prosper Marchand, and collaborated on the Cérémonies with Jean-Frédéric Bernard, with a commitment to religious tolerance. Picart, Marchand and Charles Levier belonged to what was called "a radical clique of Huguenots". Bernard was an extremely hardworking person, as we can see from the large number of productions that have come down to us. In his compositions, he tried to imitate Antoine Coypel: despite this he has nothing to envy him in terms of abundance and precision. His works are very curious and pungent, in particular due to the variety and multiplicity of the subjects present. He created the illustrations and engraved the copper himself, although he felt more inclined to drawing, and much preferred it.
