Sunday, January 19, 2025

Happy Few (Ancien Régime)

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Madame François Tronchin née Anne-Marie Fromaget
1758
pastel on vellum
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Jean-Marc Nattier
Portrait of Anna Elisabeth Leerse
1749
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Joseph de Saint-Michel
Portrait of a Gentleman
1771
pastel and gouache on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Alexis-Simon Belle
Portrait of Antoine Crozat
ca. 1715
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of the Baronne de Crussol
1785
oil on panel
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Jean-François Colson
François Véron de Forbonnais
1760
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Louis Tocqué
Denis-Jean de la Villguevray
ca. 1750-55
oil on canvas
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Antoine Coysevox
Portrait of Madame du Vaucel
1712
marble
Saint Louis Art Museum

Jean-Antoine Houdon
Élisabeth Suzanne de Jaucourt, comtesse du Cayla
1777
marble
Frick Collection, New York

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger
Jules-David Cromot, Baron du Bourg
ca. 1757
marble
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Maurice-Quentin de La Tour
Mademoiselle Ferrand meditating on Newton
ca. 1752
pastel on paper
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Nicolas de Largillière
Anne-Louis Goislard de Montsabert,
comte de Richbourg-le-Toureil

1734
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jacques-Louis David
Portrait of Madame François Buron
1767
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Portrait of a Young Woman
ca. 1772
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
Portrait of Madame Élisabeth de France
1788
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Francesco Bartolozzi
Portrait of Pierre-Noël Violet
1776
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

The earth went off hir hinges; And the Alpes
Shooke the old snow from off their trembling laps. 
The Ocean swell'd, as high as Spanish Calpe,
Or Atlas head; their saints and houshold gods
Sweate teares to shew the travailes of their citty. 
Crownes fell from holy statues, ominous birds
Defil'd the day, and wilde beastes were seene,
Leaving the woods, lodge in the streetes of Rome.
Cattell were seene that muttered humane speech:
Prodigious birthes with more and ugly jointes
Then nature gives, whose sight appauls the mother,
And dismall Prophesies were spread abroad:
And they whom fierce Bellonaes fury moves
To wound their armes, sing vengeance, Sibils priests,
Curling their bloudy lockes, howle dreadfull things,
Soules quiet and appeas'd sigh'd from their graves,
Clashing of armes was heard, in untrod woods
Shrill voices schright, and ghoasts incounter men.

– from the First Book of Lucan, translated by Christopher Marlowe (published 1600)