Offered by Franck Baptiste Paris
The young sovereign is represented in a three-quarter bust with his right hand plunged into his waistcoat.
He is richly dressed in a lace shirt and a white satin waistcoat embroidered with gold topped with a parma velvet jacket.
His torso is crossed with the blue ribbon of the Order of the Holy Spirit whose star is pinned to his jacket and is next to the Order of the Golden Fleece.
His high chin and his oblique gaze give him a very haughty air, which is reinforced by his "hammer" hairstyle with its wide rolls that frame the face and its ribbons that hold the nape of the neck.
Oil on canvas.
Beautiful state of conservation, minor restorations due to the horrors of the revolution, in particular a hasty tearing of the canvas which produced some missing canvas at the edge and traces of folds from the concealment of the canvas.
Gilded wooden frame with Louis XVI leaf.
Workshop of Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (1725-1802)*, Paris Louis XVI period around 1780.
Dimensions:
Frame: Height: 88 cm; Width: 71.5 cm
Canvas: Height: 75 cm; Width: 59 cm
Similar portraits:
Château de Versailles, Inventory No. MV3966
Château de Chantilly, Inventory No. PE 388, offered by King Louis XVI to the Baroness of Saint Didier in 1778.
Bibliography:
Jules Belleudy, “J.-S. Duplessis. Painter of the King 1725-1802", Chartres, 1913, pp. 297-302 and pp. 326-327.
Our opinion:
The features of the young sovereign who is about twenty years old are characteristic of the Bourbons with a very round face, good cheeks and a slightly hooked nose; however his clear complexion, his rosy cheekbones and his blue eyes take us back to the more northern heritage of his mother, Marie Josèphe de Saxe (1731-1767).
The king who was still very thin and youthful was particularly fond of this portrait commissioned from the painter Joseph-Siffred Duplessis and exhibited at the Salon of 1775, a few months after his accession to the throne of France.
This portrait which has now disappeared pleased him so much that he immediately commissioned his official full-length portrait from the young painter from Carpentras.
Duplessis was slow to satisfy this request and took several years to deliver this monumental work in which King Louis XVI poses in front of the throne, in an attitude similar to that of the portrait of Louis XV by Van Loo.
In the meantime, that is to say in the years 1775-1778, the first bust portrait served as an official model and the king ordered about fifty replicas from Duplessis's workshop (source Jules Belleudy) to honor state orders, that is to say to adorn embassies, ministries, etc.
The portrait that we present is part of the very limited corpus of works that survived the revolution, as are the two paintings preserved at Versailles and Chantilly.
A few other later examples were made after the revolution, when the royal family returned to the throne, which is attested by a smoother touch, mechanically woven canvases and gilded frames with a mixtion.
Our work, for its part, dates back to the 1780s, it bears the scars of the violent events of the revolution.
The canvas was hastily torn from its frame without taking the trouble to remove the nails, which caused tears on the right side; it was then rolled up to probably be hidden.
The two pieces of canvas that were used to fill the gaps bear handwritten inscriptions that describe these events and speak of "fear, violence, a knight who fled".
These moving archives were hidden behind a woven canvas from the Louis XVI period that camouflaged the inscriptions.
We patiently recorded all the details as well as the photos of the work before its restoration in order to preserve this memory intact.
The sublime representation of the king that we present is the one he preferred, in addition to its purely decorative character and the quality of its rendering, it is one of the rare pre-revolutionary effigies of King Louis XVI who was beheaded on January 23, 1793 on the Place de la Révolution in Paris.
*Joseph-Siffred Duplessis was born in Carpentras, in the Comtat Venaissin, on September 22, 1725. He received his first lessons from his father and then trained with the Carthusian Joseph Imbert.
In 1744, Duplessis entered the studio of Pierre Subleyras in Rome. From 1764, he exhibited at the Académie de Saint-Luc. Approved by the prestigious Académie de peinture in 1769, he was received at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture on August 6, 1774 with portraits of the sculptor Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain and the painter Joseph-Marie Vien, now in the Louvre Museum.
The commission for two portraits of King Louis XVI, including the official full-length portrait, and several portraits of the royal family marked the peak of his career in the years 1775-1785.
A talented portrait painter, his works are characterized by a vigorous touch. His portraits, of a very great resemblance, have the particularity of also giving a kind and expressive image of his models.
