De Piles, Drawing and Color. An Essay in Quantitative Art History

French art theorist and critic Roger de Piles was less consistent than is often thought. De Piles was also known for his disputed 1708 balance des peintres, in which he decomposed painting into its fundamental characteristics of composition, drawing, expression, and color. He advocated the importance of color at a time when the Academie Royale de la Peinture et de la Sculpture, which had been created by King Louis XIV's court in 1648, regarded drawing as the most important element. However, he may not have been that far from what the court, if not the king himself, really thought of art, or at least of the art represented in the famous royal collection. Although he singled out the importance of color, he did not deny that of the other elements; neither does his view necessarily imply that color should be given more weight than the other characteristics. Curiously, his tastes, and not those of the academy, were shared by the king, who was the protector of the academy and whose favorite artist, at least officially, was Charles Le Brun, a tough defender of drawing against color.