Paul Fréart de Chantelou

Paul Fréart de Chantelou (25 March 1609 – 1694) was a French collector and patron of the arts.

[3] In 1638 Paul Fréart de Chantelou became a secretary to his cousin, François Sublet de Noyers, the superintendent of the Bâtiments du Roi, who sent Paul and his brother Roland to Rome in 1639 and 1640, principally to fetch Poussin, but also to bring back casts and designs of Roman antiquities for the French court.

[4] Poussin's return to Paris in December 1640 would doubtless have resulted in the end of his artistic career had he not attached himself to a prestigious clientele of Parisian amateurs, among whom Chantelou was of the most influential.

[5] Among Chantelou's commissions from Poussin after his time in Paris are his Seven Sacraments (1644–1648),[6] once in the collection of the duke of Sutherland and now in the store of the National Gallery of Scotland, and the famous Self-portrait (1650), now in the musée du Louvre.

Chantelou kept a precise day-to-day Journal of this meeting—from Bernini's arrival in Paris at the start of June, to his departure five months later—which survives to this day.