Cardinal Mazarini

P Piscator
Cardinal Mazarini
Ca. 1660
Etching
175 x 110 mm
£75
Cardinal Mazarini, born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino (1602-1661) was a French cardinal and statesman who controlled the French government while Louis XIV was young. Mazarin was a conservative who followed the aims of Cardinal Richelieu his main sponsor. Their goals were to support the Catholic Church, to secure and maintain royal absolutism in France, and to make France the leading power of Europe. His main achievements were the ending of the Thirty Years War through the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and his defeat of the Fronde in 1653. Using an elaborate network of personal relations, he restored royal authority to the point at which the king could rule alone. Mazarin attained his aims by both scrupulous and unscrupulous means, inspired love in some and hatred in others, and was controversial in his own time and ever since.