A version of *Monseigneur de Saint-Albin* by Hyacinthe Rigaud

At the end of^{the 16th} century, the portrait genre was still regarded, particularly in France, as a minor art form. Classicism placed history painting and mythological painting at the top of the hierarchy of genres. Hyacinthe Rigaud was the French painter who raised portraiture to a position of prestige, to such an extent that he was known as the ‘French Van Dyck’.

Antoine Van Dyck (1599–1641), of Flemish origin, was indeed the most famous portrait painter of the royal family and the British aristocracy in the first half of the^17th century. Like him, Rigaud became the painter to the French royal family and the French aristocracy in the late^17th century and the first half of^{the 18th century} . Like the Flemish master, Rigaud refused to idealise his subjects, as was common practice at the time.

Rigaud impressed his contemporaries with what d’Argenville described as the ‘perfect likeness’ to his subjects, whom he also knew how to showcase to perfection through their clothing. He had been familiar with fabrics since his childhood in his father’s tailor’s workshop and mastered the art of depicting them like no other. In Rigaud’s work, furs, velvets, satins, lace and wigs are rendered with a naturalistic yet elegant precision that delighted kings and princes.  The painter is also renowned for his sense of composition, rendering poses that are at times frozen, with faces in which only a subtle psychological nuance is revealed.

As for the subject, Cardinal Charles de Saint-Albin (1698–1764), he was described by Saint-Simon as the ‘unacknowledged bastard son of this prince and the actress Florence’. And indeed, he was the illegitimate son of Philippe, Duke of Orléans, Regent of France (1674–1723), and an opera dancer, Florence Perrin. Legitimised in 1706, though not officially recognised, his father steered him towards a clerical career by appointing him Bishop of Rouen (1721) and then of Laon (1722), a Peer of France, and by helping him secure the archbishopric of Cambrai.

In the year of his accession, 1723, Saint-Albin commissioned Hyacinthe Rigaud to paint his portrait. The original 1723 painting is held in Los Angeles, at the Paul J. Getty Museum of Art.

Saint-Simon described the cardinal as extremely kind but utterly ignorant. As for his grandmother, the Princess Palatine, she confided to Harling on 30 October 1721 that this grandson ‘is dearest to me, since I regard him as the most legitimate of my son’s bastards; since childhood he has been closer to me than the others. I would very much like my son to legitimise him’.”

Ariane James-Sarazin, Hyacinthe Rigaud, 2 vols. Paris, Faton, 2016.