Nicolas De Largillière

(Parigi, 1656 - Parigi, 1746)

Attributed to

Oil on canvas

83x65 cm. Framed

Between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Nicolas de Largillière was the leading figure, along with Hyacinte Rigaud, on the French artistic scene in the field of portraiture. In particular, Largillière's painting stands out for its elegance, coloristic wisdom, softness of complexions, and virtuosity in the rendering of fabrics, with specific care in differentiating light effects according to the type of garment. We can appreciate all these pictorial virtues in the fine portrait here, of particularly loose workmanship. What stands out, in addition to the frank vividness of expression, is the contemptuous ease in the pose and clothing of the personage effigy, free from the stiffness and affectation that often distinguishes Largillière's more official portraiture: a refined apparent carelessness that likens this canvas to some of the painter's most genuine and unadorned self-portraits, from the one in the Family Portrait in the Louvre to the one in Versailles, to the one in the Vasari Corridor of the Uffizi.