- NameGuillaume Chasteau
- Activity/Titleengraver
- Sexmale
- Variant namesGuillaume Chasteau
- Nationality/DatesFrench, baptized 1635-04-18, dead 1683-09-15
- PlacesPlace of birth: Orléans, France
Place of death: Paris, France
BiographyFrench engraver and print publisher. He travelled to Rome, where he trained as an engraver with Johann Friedrich Greuter (c. 1590/93–1662) and Cornelis Bloemaert the younger. He then worked for a time for the Papacy and stayed in Venice and Genoa before returning to France. He taught engraving in Lyon to Benoît Farjat (1646–c. 1720). Having moved to Paris, he became known for his engravings after works by Poussin, such as the Death of Germanicus (1663; see Weigert, no. 35). He worked for Louis XIV and in 1663 became one of the first engravers to be admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. In 1665 he married the miniaturist Antoinette Hérault (1642–95), thus becoming brother-in-law to the painters Charles-Antoine Hérault (1644–1718) and Noël Coypel. Chasteau went into partnership with the latter in the publication of thesis frontispieces, Coypel supplying the drawings and Chasteau carrying out the engraving and distribution. Without abandoning engraving, he actively engaged himself in the publishing and selling of prints, as is shown by the inventory made after his death; he set up business in the Rue St Jacques, first under the sign of the Guardian Angel and then under that of the Bust of Louis XIV. He exhibited at the Académie Royale in 1673. His works, which are cold, rigorous and academic, consist mainly of reproductions after great Italian masters such as Raphael, Annibale Carracci, Pietro da Cortona and Ciro Ferri, and also after Poussin and Noël Coypel. As well as Farjat, he also taught Charles Simonneau. In 1686 Chasteau’s widow married as her second husband the painter and engraver Jean-Baptiste Bonnart (b 1654).