Félibien, André

Félibien, André (b Chartres, May 1619; d Paris, 11 May 1695).
French administrator and writer on art. He is remembered chiefly for his Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes, first published in 1666–88, often reprinted, and translated into several languages. This massive compilation is a history of European art from antiquity to his own days. It contains the fullest contemporary biography of Poussin (who became a friend of Félibien when he was secretary to the French ambassador in Rome, 1647–9). His other writings include a textbook on artists' techniques with a dictionary of art terms: Des principes de l'architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture, et des autres arts qui en dépendent, avec un dictionnaire des termes propres à chacun de ces arts (1676).