Gods and Foolish Grandeur: Hyacinthe Rigaud

Showing posts with label Hyacinthe Rigaud. Show all posts

Sunday, March 15, 2026

Les enfants - the children of Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière, marble high-reliefs, circa 1669-70

Marie-Anne de Bourbon, Légitimée de France, mademoiselle de Blois, at approximately three or four years old.

Louis de Bourbon, Légitimé de France, comte de Vermandois, at approximately two or three years old.

The sculptures, by an unknown artist, are in the collection of the château de Versailles.

The duchesse de La Vallière with mademoiselle de Blois and the comte de Vermandois, studio of or a copy after Pierre Mignard.

Louise de La Vallière (Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière and de Vaujours 6 August 1644 – 6 June 1710) had four children by Louis XIV, two of whom survived early childhood, and only one who reached full adulthood. The first two were registered under false surnames: Charles ‘de Lincourt’ (19 December 1663 – circa 1665 or 1666), who died in infancy and was never legitimized, and Philippe ‘Derssy’ (7 January 1665 – July 1666), who also died in infancy and never legitimized.

Mademoiselle de Blois and the comte de Vermandois, a nineteenth-century copy after Pierre Mignard.

Marie-Anne de Bourbon, the dowager princesse de Conti, by François de Troy, circa 1690-91.

Marie-Anne de Bourbon, Légitimée de France, mademoiselle de Blois (2 October 1666, Vincennes – 3 May 1739, Paris). In the first of the king's series of scandalous marriages between his illegitimate offspring and members of the royal family, she was wed at the age of thirteen to her eighteen-year-old distant relative Louis Armand I, prince de Conti. Widowed five years later - she contracted smallpox, passed it to her husband; she recovered, he died - she never remarried and had no issue. She inherited the titles of duchesse de La Vallière and de Vaujours from her mother.

The dowager princesse de Conti, by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1706.

The comte de Vermandois, attributed to François de Troy, before 1683.

Louis de Bourbon, Légitimé de France, comte de Vermandois (2 October 1667, Saint-Germain-en-Laye – 18 November 1683, Flanders). He was seven years old when his mother entered a Carmelite convent in Paris and he was put into the care of his aunt, the duchesse d'Orléans, wife of the king's famously homosexual/bisexual brother. Later, at the age of only fifteen, having joined a secret group of young aristocrats calling themselves La Sainte Congregation des Glorieux Pédérastes, he was involved in a great scandal implicating members of the duc d'Orléans' circle. Several men who practiced le vice italien were banished from court; he was exiled to Normandy. In an attempt at "rehabilitation," his father the king sent him to join a military campaign in Flanders, where he soon fell ill and died. He was just barely sixteen.

The comte de Vermandois, by Pierre Mignard, before 1683.

Friday, September 11, 2020

The brothers Rijneveld - two portraits by Louis Tocqué, 1738

Isaac van Rijneveld (1706-92) and Arnoldus van Rijneveld (1715-98) were partners in the firm of their father, a prominent Amsterdam jeweler. They traveled regularly to Paris for their work, then as now, a European center of the jeweler's trade. There they sat for Tocqué, the celebrated portrait artist who had painted their elder brother the previous year.

Isaac van Rijneveld was thirty-two when this portrait was painted.

Nine years his brother's junior, Arnoldus van Rijneveld was twenty-three when he sat for this portrait.

Jean-Louis Tocqué (19 November 1696, Paris - 10 February 1772, Paris), French portrait painter. His father, also a painter, died when he was only thirteen and he was eventually put under the care of another artist, Jean-Marc Nattier. He studied under Nattier, as well as Nicolas Bertin and Hyacinthe Rigaud. A member of the Académie from 1731, he completed his first work for the French royal family eight years later; his state portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska, painted the following year, is considered his masterpiece. In 1757 the Czarina Elisabeth invited him to visit the Russian court, paying him generously for his work there. He then made lengthy and lucrative visits to the other northern royal courts before he returned to Paris. Having married Nattier's daughter Marie in 1747, he eventually retired, gave up painting completely, and lived the rest of his life on the fortune he had amassed during his career.