commissioned by distinguished parliament men and persons of standing at the Court. At last the king, whose portrait he afterwards engraved in different sizes--as often as eleven times--gave him a number of sittings, after which Nanteuil received a pension and the title of Dessinateur du Cabinet.[36] Louis XIV. was not satisfied with thus rewarding a talent already recognised as superior; he was also desirous of stimulating by general measures the development of what he had himself declared a "liberal art."[37] Engravers were privileged to exercise it without being subjected to "any apprenticeship, or controlled by other laws than those of their own genius;" and seven years later (1667) the royal establishment at the Gobelins became virtually a school of engraving. Whilst Lebrun, its first director-in-chief, assembled therein an army of painters, draughtsmen, and even sculptors, and wrought from his own designs the tapestries of the "Éléments" and the "Saisons," Sebastien Leclerc superintended the labours of a large body of native and foreign engravers, entertained at the king's expense. One of these, Edelinck, had been summoned to France by Colbert. Born at Antwerp in 1640, and a contemporary of the engravers trained by the disciples of Rubens himself, he was distinguished, like them, by his vigour of handling and knowledge of effect. Once settled in Paris, he supplemented these Flemish characteristics with qualities distinctively French, and was soon a foremost engraver of his time. Endowed with singular insight and elasticity of mind, he readily assimilated, and sometimes even improved upon, the style of those painters whom he reproduced, and adopted a new sentiment with every new original. He began, in France, with an engraving of Raphael's "Holy Family," the so-called "Vierge de François I.," which is severe in aspect, and altogether Italian in drawing; and he followed this up with plates of the "Madeleine" of Lebrun, his "Christ aux Anges," and his "Famille de Darius," all of them admirable reproductions, in which the defects of the originals are modified, while their beauties are increased by the use of methods which make their peculiar and essential characteristics none the less conspicuous. In interpreting Lebrun, Edelinck altered neither his significance nor his style; he only touched his work with fresh truth and nature: as, when dealing with Rigaud, he converted that artist's pomposity and flourish into a certain opulence and vigour. When, on the contrary, he had to interpret a work stamped with calm and reflective genius, his own bold and brilliant talent became impregnated with serenity, and he could execute with a marvellous reticence such a translation as that from Philippe de Champagne--the painter's portrait of himself--a favourite, it is said, with the engraver, and one of the masterpieces of the art.