Francois de Poilly
French, 1623 –1693
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François Poilly, or François de Poilly was a French engraver.
He was born in Abbeville, the son of a goldsmith who gave him his first drawing lessons. He was apprenticed to the Parisian engraver Pierre Daret. Poilly then travelled to Rome where he stayed for seven years with the engraver Cornelis Bloemaert, where he acquired mastership of the art. He died in Paris.
Poilly's is noted for approximately 400 engravings. He is known for mainly religious subjects after Raphael, Guido Reni, Annibale Carracci, Pierre Mignard, Charles Le Brun, Nicolas Poussin, Sébastien Bourdon, and Eustache Lesueur.
He made the engraved illustrations of the ceremonial clothes of the orders mentioned in "Maximilien Bullot & Pierre Hélyot's Histoire des ordres ...", Ed. Nicolas Gosselin, Paris, 1719 (Google Books). See François de Poilly – History of Orders in Wikimedia commons
François' younger brother, Nicolas de Poilly (1626–1698), was an engraver too, as well as the latter's two sons, Jean-Baptiste de Poilly (1669–1728) and Nicolas de Poilly the Younger (1675–1723).