Portrait of the Duke of St Simon, French school around 1700

Presumed portrait of the Duke of St Simon represented at mid-bust, three-quarter view.
With his haughty bearing, he sports an opulent curly hairstyle which frames a beautiful face with pink complexions, in the middle of which light blue eyes stand out.
Our knight is dressed in armor, a lace frill and a red velvet cape.

Oil on canvas, very good state of conservation.

Original gilded oak wood frame.

French School around 1700.

Dimensions:

Frame: Height: 70 cm; Width: 60 cm
Canvas: Height: 50 cm; Width: 40 cm

Our opinion :

The attention paid to details, notably the complexions of the face, the curls of the hair or the reflection of the velvet on the metal armor tell us that we are not in the presence of a workshop version but of a finished work.
The carved oak frame also supports this and directs us towards a Parisian production from the end of the reign of Louis XIV.
The composition is similar to the successful productions of Hyacinthe Rigaud, which were subsequently used by numerous painters.
It is also very likely that our work is a modello painted before the creation of a portrait of higher dimensions.


*Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon (1675-1755)
Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon, born January 16, 1675 in Paris, where he died March 2, 1755, was a duke, peer of France, courtier and memorialist.“Sagacious and whimsical spy of Versailles and the corridors of power”, he is an essential witness to the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the Regency.
Nostalgic for a golden age of the monarchy, he wants to be a duke and professional peer, but his belief in an “aristo-monarchy with a human face” is also the affirmation of spirituality. A theorist of social hierarchy, he offers an internalized vision of inequality which finds its roots in a very ancient tradition. A pugnacious, irreducible imprecator, he nevertheless predicts the end of the monarchy under the blows of those who want to destroy "what is great in itself", and depicts the court as an aesthetic of the aristocratic norm.
The work presents great diversity in the composition of each text, but great coherence in the vision of the memoirist and the historian of a bygone, fantastic and obsessive world. For his artistic and refined culture of speech, his stylistic freedom and his subjectivity, Saint-Simon is considered one of the greatest French writers of the 18th century and his Mémoires as a monument of French literature.
Michelet expresses the seduction and resistance that Saint-Simon’s life, ideology and work can inspire: “I adopted him, criticized him. I loved and unloved him. The fruit of these variations is that I was finally able to acquire, in the face of this harsh lord, a certain freedom.”