talleyrand -- 7/12/24

12 Jul 2024

talleyrand -- 7/12/24

0 COMMENTS

Today's selection-- from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings by Kathryn Calley Galitz. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord, who escaped to Philadelphia during the French Reign of Terror and then returned to France as an advisor to Napoleon:

CHARLES MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND PERIGORD, PRINCE DE BENEVENT 1808
Baron Francois Gerard French, 1770-1837
Oil on canvas; 83 ⅞ X 57 ⅞ (213 x 147 cm)
Purchase, Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift, 2012 (2012.348)

“A former bishop who became Napoleon's minister of foreign affairs, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1754-1838) was the consummate political survivor. His career spanned some five decades and at least as many regime changes. This informal portrait by Francois Gerard, the most sought-after portraitist in early nineteenth-century France, captures the diplomat's characteristic inscrutability. Years later, in exile, Napoleon would complain, ‘Talleyrand's face is so impassive that you never know how to read anything on it.’

“Talleyrand commissioned the portrait not long after resigning from office, finding himself at odds with Napoleon's expansionist foreign policy. Despite its domestic setting, the work is not devoid of political content, most conspicuously expressed in the silver insignia of the Legion d'Honneur, awarded by Napoleon in 1805. and in the bust of the emperor partially visible in the mirrored door in the background. The interior, however, is dominated by furnishings in the Neoclassical style of Louis XVI (ruled 1774-92) rather than that of the Empire, reflecting Talleyrand's avowed taste for life in the ancien regime. Gerard lavished his brush on the gilding of both the armchair and the writing table, rendering them with such precision that the makers of each piece have been identified. The artist included the portrait with the constellation of official Imperial portraits he exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1808."