Louis XIII style

Its distinctness as a period in the history of French art has much to do with the regency under which Louis XIII began his reign (1610–1643).

His mother and regent, Marie de' Medici, imported Mannerism from her homeland of Italy and the influence of Italian art was to be strongly felt for several decades.

Among the French painters who blended Italian mannerism with a love of genre scenes were Georges de La Tour, Simon Vouet, and the Le Nain brothers.

The influence of the painters on subsequent generations, however, was minimised by the rise of classicism under Nicolas Poussin and his followers.

De Brosse began a tradition of classicism in architecture that was continued by Jacques Lemercier, who completed the Palais and whose own most famous work of the Louis XIII period is the Sorbonne Chapel (1635).