Jean Berain (1640-1711) - Galerie Léage

A brilliant ornamentalist, Jean Bérain exerted considerable influence on the arts during the reign of Louis XIV. A prolific inventor, he perfected an original taste, which he applied to numerous fields and which had a significant influence on his contemporaries.

Son and grandson of a gunmaker, Jean Bérain was born in Lorraine in 1640. At a very young age, he emigrated to Paris with his parents to escape the Thirty Years’ War then raging in the region. Initially trained as a gunmaker, he proved to be an outstanding draughtsman. At the age of 19, he published his first collection, Diverses pièces très utiles pour les Arquebuzières, which was an immediate success. His skills were noticed by the Court, and in 1671 he was asked to work for the King’s Cabinet of engraved plates. On this occasion, he probably benefited from the protection of the great Charles Le Brun (1619−1690), the king’s first painter. In 1674, Bérain was appointed draftsman of the King’s Chamber and Cabinet, making him one of the leading Court artists, designing sets and costumes for numerous events, ballets, comedies, carrousels and other celebrations. In 1679, Louis XIV allowed him to take up residence under the Great Gallery of the Louvre, an honor reserved for the kingdom’s finest servants. One of his neighbor there was cabinetmaker and bronzemaker André-Charles Boulle (1642−1732). He enjoyed a brilliant career until the early 18^th century, before gradually retiring from 1705 onwards.

As early as the 1680s, Jean Bérain was described by his contemporaries as a “universal genius”. His seemingly boundless creativity was applied to sets for a wide variety of Court events, as well as to Jean-Baptiste Lully’s (1632−1687) opera sets and aristocratic interior decorations. For the former, he designed everything from costumes and backdrops to stage machinery and lighting. The magic of his designs was still celebrated in the mid-18^th century, with Pierre-Jean Mariette declaring that there had never been “theater decorations better understood or costumes richer and more tasteful” than his. He applied an unprecedented sense of harmony, surprise and profusion to interiors. In 1681, he decorated Louis XIV’s medal cabinet at Versailles, covering it with mirrors right up to the ceiling. For the Marquis de Segnelay, son of Colbert, he designed the entire dining room of his château de Sceaux after 1685. In 1688, he designed several ceilings for the Prince de Condé’s new château at Chantilly. Few of his decorations are preserved today. It is mainly through their engraved reproduction that they can be admired.

Among his many designs, Bérain delivered several furniture and objets d’art models. In 1684, he supervised the creation of a sumptuous eight-legged desk for Louis XIV’s medal cabinet. For the king at Versailles, he also designed a monumental clock and its base, which was never delivered to the sovereign. Included in the collections of the Duc d’Aumont in the 18^th century, it has now been lost to history. His work also includes numerous mirror frames, chandeliers, vases, tapestries and torchères. Bérain was also one of the first to design chests of drawers in the late 17^th century, a highly innovative piece of furniture. An example in the Wallace Collection by cabinetmaker Alexandre-Jean Oppenordt (1639−1715) is based on one of Bérain’s designs. He introduced movement and curves into furniture, breaking with the monumentality of early Louis XIV furniture.
More than his furniture designs, Bérain revolutionized the decorative arts with his decors. He developed an art of the grotesque, punctuated by fantastic figures, human, floral or animal. His compositions were widely adopted by his contemporaries: Boulle, another eminent artistic figure in the reign of Louis XIV, literally cited him for the decoration on the back of a toilet mirror now in the Wallace Collection (inv. F50).

Bérain’s influence on his contemporaries was as great as his genius. He created a distinctive taste, celebrated by his peers and widely disseminated through engraving in France and throughout Europe. The Swedish architect Nicodème Tessin le jeune (1654−1728), to whom he was close, relentlessly praised his merits to the Swedish court and introduced his designs to Scandinavia.
Breaking away from the monumentality of the Grand Siècle, Bérain introduced a fantasy and lightness that would later lead to rocaille. Somewhere between theatrical monumentality and lyricism, his compositions are a veritable poetry of ornament, underpinned by accurate proportions and a highly refined choice of motifs. His elegant decors, easier and quicker to implement than the great classical decors, also reflect the taste of a more fashion-conscious society. They heralded the 18^th-century race for novelty.

Jean Bérain was a key player in the formation of Louis XIV taste, and his influence was considerable. Admired and imitated by his contemporaries, his work continued to be appreciated in later centuries. Under the Second Empire, his engraved work was published in several collections, and the variety of his ornaments continues to surprise us today.

Bibliography
Jérôme de La Gorce, Bérain. Dessinateur du Roi Soleil, Herscher, 1986
Motifs ornementaux de l’Œuvre de Bérain. Ornemaniste du Roy, Éditions Vial, 2011

Jean Berain (1640−1711)