 published in 1699 following his appointement as Conseiller Honoraire to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture.In 1705 he followed Amelot de Gournay to Spain but illness forced him to return to Paris, where he died in 1709.His important contribution to aesthetic theory rests on his "Dialogue sur le coloris" ("Dialogue on colours"), in which he initiated his famous defence of Rubens in the argument started in 1671 by Philippe de Champaigne on the relative merits of drawing and color in the work of Titian (in a lecture to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture on Titian's "Virgin and Child with St John".)