French family of engravers. Charles Simonneau l’aîné (b Orléans, 3 Aug 1645; d Paris, 22 March 1728) was the son of an Orléans wine merchant. In 1667 he began a three-year apprenticeship in Paris with the engraver Guillaume Chasteau, at the same time taking drawing-lessons at the Académie Royale; he may have been taught by Noël Coypel. Simonneau himself was admitted (reçu) to the Académie in 1710 with his portrait of Jules Hardouin Mansart after François de Troy. All his engravings reproduced the works of other artists, such as Charles Le Brun, Elisabeth Sophie Chéron and Antoine Coypel, in a style that showed the influence of Sébastien Leclerc (i) and was quite close to that of Claude Duflos. Among his most beautiful pieces were the seven plates of François Girardon’s funerary monument to Cardinal Richelieu in the church of the Sorbonne, Paris.