Cardinal de Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne

This painting, acquired by Pierre’s family in 1872 (Rougé auction, Paris, 8 April 1872, lot 3), bears an inscription at the top of the work: ‘semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt’, a quotation from Virgil’s*Aeneid*: ‘Your glory, your name and your praise shall endure for ever’. At the bottom is another inscription: ‘Original of Cardinal de Richelieu painted by Philippe de Champaigne’.

Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, was at the height of his influence when he set about crafting his public image. He enlisted the talents of the painter Philippe de Champaigne, from whom he commissioned a total of twenty-one portraits. Champaigne was a Flemish painter based in Paris, whose reputation was built on religious subjects, as well as landscapes and portraits. Following in the tradition of Flemish naturalism introduced into French court portraiture by Frans Pourbus, Champaigne also painted Marie de Médicis and Louis XIII, who appointed him an official court painter.

The cardinal is more commonly depicted in full-length portraits, as in the version held at the Louvre, painted around 1639. This portrait forms part of a series that included the version intended for the gallery at the Palais Cardinal in Paris, the original of which is now lost. Established to honour the great men of French history, this private gallery thus included a portrait of the cardinal, who is thereby placed in the same lineage as Cardinal d’Amboise, Suger and Du Guesclin, and alongside members of the royal family, foremost among whom was King Louis XIII.

The portrait preserved at the Château d’Aulteribe dates from after 1633, as the cardinal is wearing the cross of the Order of the Holy Spirit, which had been conferred upon him on 14 May of that year. This portrait forms part of the series ‘with a collar fastened by short laces’ painted between 1633 and 1634. In later portraits, the collar will be tightened. The quality of the work suggests that the painter may have executed it directly from life, with the intention of using it as a model for the large ceremonial portraits. There are, in fact, a large number of versions of the full-length portrait of Cardinal Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne, held notably at the Louvre, the Palais de l’Institut and the National Gallery in London.

There are a varying number of bust portraits of the cardinal, held either in private collections or in public collections (the Palace of Versailles and the Historical Museum of Strasbourg). The very famous triple portrait of the cardinal, held at the National Gallery in London, was painted in Paris in the artist’s studio and then sent to Rome to serve as a model for the sculptor Francesco Mocchi, who was commissioned to create a bust of Cardinal Richelieu. The original version of this triple portrait – which is incomplete as the painting was cut in two – is now housed in the Strasbourg City Museum.

Bernard Dorival, Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674): his life, works and catalogue raisonné, Laget, Paris, 1976 and ‘An unknown portrait of Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne’, Revue du Louvre et des musées de France, 1970 , no. 1, plate 15.