TheLouis XIII style orLouis Treize was a fashion inFrench art andarchitecture, especially affecting thevisual anddecorative arts. Its distinctness as a period in the history of French art has much to do with theregency under whichLouis XIII began his reign (1610–1643). His mother and regent,Marie de' Medici, importedMannerism from her homeland ofItaly and the influence of Italian art was to be strongly felt for several decades.
Louis XIII-style painting was influenced from the north, throughFlemish andDutch Baroque, and from the south, through Italian mannerism and early Baroque. Schools developed aroundCaravaggio andPeter Paul Rubens. Among the French painters who blended Italian mannerism with a love ofgenre scenes wereGeorges de La Tour,Simon Vouet, and theLe Nain brothers. The influence of the painters on subsequent generations, however, was minimised by the rise ofclassicism underNicolas Poussin and his followers.
Louis XIII architecture was equally influenced by Italian styles. The greatest French architect of the era,Salomon de Brosse, designed theLuxembourg Palace for Marie de' Medici. De Brosse began a tradition of classicism in architecture that was continued byJacques Lemercier, who completed the Palais and whose own most famous work of the Louis XIII period is theSorbonne Chapel (1635). Under the next generation of architects,French Baroque architecture would take an even greater classical shift.
Furniture of the period was typically large and austere.
