Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne

Etienne La Font de Saint- Yenne (* 1688 in Lyon, † 1771) was an early French art critic.

As the son of a bourgeois family of Lyon, he completed in a Lyon silk manufactory trained as a draftsman model. Subsequent trips to Holland and Flanders ( 1729 ) brought him into contact with the painting. In 1741 he settled in Paris as an art writer and wrong in the relevant artistic and social circles. He devoted himself to architecture and historic preservation, and closed with some famous artists friendship.

To his reputation as the founder of the public art criticism in France contributed to his review of the Paris Salon of 1746, 1747 in The Hague as anonymous Reflections sur quelques Causes de l' état ​​des présence de la peinture en France ( considerations for some causes of the current state of painting in France) published. As this revolutionary about a hundred pages long review appeared, because she spoke for the first time that anyone had the right to judge a work of art for their own subjective point of view. The art critic should convey not only between the viewer and the artist, but also the artist " without passion and without any personal interest " giving advice. "

Work

• Reflections sur quelques Causes de l' état ​​des présence de la peinture en France. Avec un examen of principaux ouvrages epic au mois d' août the Louvre in 1746. The Hague in 1747.
• Oeuvre critique. Etienne Jollet ( éd. ). Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux -arts, Paris, 2001.