1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Charpentier, François

CHARPENTIER, FRANÇOIS (1620–1702), French archaeologist and man of letters, was born in Paris on the 15th of February 1620. He was intended for the bar, but was employed by Colbert, who had determined on the foundation of a French East India Company, to draw up an explanatory account of the project for Louis XIV. Charpentier regarded as absurd the use of Latin in monumental inscriptions, and to him was entrusted the task of supplying the paintings of Lebrun in the Versailles Gallery with appropriate legends. His verses were so indifferent that they had to be replaced by others, the work of Racine and Boileau, both enemies of his. Charpentier in his Excellence de la langue française (1683) had anticipated Perrault in the famous academical dispute concerning the relative merit of the ancients and moderns. He is credited with a share in the production of the magnificent series of medals that commemorate the principal events of the age of Louis XIV. Charpentier, who was long in receipt of a pension of 1200 livres from Colbert, was erudite and ingenious, but he was always heavy and commonplace. His other works include a Vie de Socrate (1650), a translation of the Cyropaedia of Xenophon (1658), and the Traité de la peinture parlante (1684).