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Jean Baptiste Colbert
Jean Baptiste Colbert , 1619-83, French statesman. The son of a draper, he was trained in business and was hired by Cardinal Mazarin to look after his financial affairs. On his deathbed, Mazarin recommended Colbert to King Louis XIV, who made him comptroller general of finances (1665). Colbert hel...
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Antoine Coysevox
Antoine Coysevox , 1640-1720, French sculptor. He enjoyed the patronage of Louis XIV and produced a great part of the sculpture at Versailles. His Winged Horses, at the entrance to the Tuileries gardens, and his portrait and memorial sculptures show free, vigorous, and original treatment. The bust...
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Gérard Edelinck
Gérard Edelinck , 1640-1707, French engraver, b. Antwerp. He is known for his faithful interpretations of the work of Raphael, Le Brun, Champaigne, and other masters and for his portraits of celebrities of the time, including Louis XIV, Colbert, La Fontaine, John Dryden, and Descartes.
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Rochefort
Rochefort or Rochefort-sur-Mer , city (1990 pop. 26,949), Charente-Maritime dept., W France, on the Charente River near the Bay of Biscay. It is a fishing port with shipyards and aircraft and machine industries. It has become a popular health spa since the early 1960s. An important naval base in...
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Claude Perrault
Claude Perrault , 1613-88, French architect, scientist, and physician. One of the most eminent French scholars of his time, he advanced the study of anatomy and made other scientific contributions. His greatest architectural achievement is his work on the east facade of the Louvre, known as the Colo...
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Beauvais
Beauvais , town (1990 pop. 56,278), capital of Oise dept., N France. Tractors, ceramic tiles, textiles, and musical instruments are among its many manufactures. A Roman town and an early episcopal see, it flourished in the Middle Ages and again after the 17th cent., when Colbert established the stat...
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French East India Company
French East India Company 1664-1769, commercial enterprise planned by Jean Baptiste Colbert and chartered by King Louis XIV for the purpose of trading in the Eastern Hemisphere. It failed to found a colony on Madagascar but established ports on the nearby islands of Bourbon and Île-de-France ...
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Manufacture nationale des Gobelins
Manufacture nationale des Gobelins , state-controlled tapestry manufactory in Paris. It was founded as a dye works in the mid-15th cent. by Jean Gobelin. A tapestry works started by two Flemish weavers, Marc de Comans and François de la Planche, called to France by Henri IV in 1601, was later...
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Dennis Vincent Brutus
Dennis Vincent Brutus 1924-, South African poet, b. Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). Brutus grew up in South Africa and received (1947) his B.A. from its Univ. of Fort Hare at Alice. He taught high school from 1948 until 1962, when as a result of his political activism, notably his prote...
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Charles Le Brun
Charles Le Brun , 1619-90, French painter, decorator, and architect. He studied with Vouet and in Rome. Strongly influenced by Poussin, he returned in 1646 to Paris, where he gradually developed a more decorative form of classicism. He decorated the Hôtel Lambert and worked at Vaux-le-Vicomte ...
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