Nicasius Bernaerts

In the final part of his career he worked for the French court and provided tapestry designs to the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris.

[2] He was employed by the French king Louis XIV to make paintings of all the new animals added to his menagerie at the Palace of Versailles.

[5] He provided studies and animal paintings for the needs of the Gobelins Manufactory and royal real estate office (Garde-Meuble de la Couronne).

The animals are depicted in quiet poses, their bodies almost always in profile, their eyes often turned to the viewer, as in portraits of humans.

[10] Bernaerts' paintings are now the best sources for identifying the original animal population of the Versailles menagerie as they were inventoried by Nicolas Bailly in his Inventaire des tableaux du roy rédigé entre 1709 et 1710 (first published by Fernand Engerand, Paris, 1899).

An old Gobelins inventory, which was rediscovered in 1967, shows that a number of these works were produced by the generation of artist preceding Desportes such as Nicasius Bernaerts.

It is assumed that among the works now attributed to Bernaerts at the Louvre a number must be authentic, most probably the nicely done, rather antiquated portraits of different poultry races.