Bulletin du Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles (Jul 2023)
Catalogue de la série de portraits des amiraux de France conservés au musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon
Abstract
This catalogue of the portraits of French admirals accompanies our article: “The Genesis of a Gallery of Historical Portraits: the Example of the Series of French Admirals”. These portraits, which were commissioned in the 1720s by the Count of Toulouse to decorate the Admirals’ Room of his Parisian mansion, were bequeathed to the collections of Louis-Philippe’s Versailles museum. This catalogue presents the material and historical characteristics of these sixty-one portraits of admirals, as well as some of the probable sources that made it possible to produce them. The identification of these various sources, both historical and iconographic, makes it possible to understand how these works were executed and to identify the main actors and artists who contributed to the creation of the series. The proposed analysis of this ensemble allows us to understand more concretely the series of retrospective portraits and the way they were conceived at the beginning of the eighteenth century. These figures of admirals, which combine historical document, work of art and aristocratic entertainment, allow us to broaden our knowledge of the working methods and sources used by the painters of this minor genre of historical portraiture in the modern period.
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