![Gerard de Lairesse - Achilles Discovered Among the Daughters of Lycomede [c.1680]](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2941/15282223421_c4ecc1edae_o.jpg)
Gerard de Lairesse (Liège, September 1641 – June 1711) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist. His broad range of talent included music, poetry, and theatre. He was a disciplined intellectual, inspired by the notion that only correct theory could produce good art. For him theory meant the strict adherence to rules. The ultimate purpose of the visual arts was the improvement of mankind, and therefore art must, above all, be lofty and edifying. He set forth hierarchies of social status, of subject matter, of beauty itself. The artist, he said, must learn grace by mingling with the social and intellectual élite, must allow his subject matter to teach the highest moral principles, and must strive for ideal beauty.
[Mauritshuis, The Hague - Oil on canvas, 138 cm x 190 cm]