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This article, which is part of the Fonds national suisse (FNS) project entitled “Peindre et penser la peinture en France durant le premier xviie siècle: discours, artistes, concepts” (Painting and Thinking about Painting in France during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century: Discourses, Artists, Concepts), draws on a wide-ranging corpus of various texts to study the presence of Italian artists and their works in the artistic literature published in French during the long early seventeenth century. It brings to light the models that shaped the imaginations of both authors and their readers during this pivotal period –not only in terms of Franco-Italian relations, but also the development of written discourse on painted artistic production. The recurrence of certain painters, as well as the absence of others, is analyzed alongside the discourses surrounding them, with close attention paid to the context of both written works and artworks.