903. CARDINAL FLEURY.
Hyacinthe Rigaud (French: 1659-1743).
Rigaud was a native of Perpignan, and the son and grandson of a painter. In 1681 he went up to Paris, and following the advice of Le Brun devoted himself to portraiture. He studied diligently the works of Van Dyck, whose disciple he always professed to be. He rapidly obtained fame as a portrait-painter, but it was not till 1700—on the completion of his "St. Andrew" now in the Louvre—that he was admitted as an historical painter into the Academy. He held various offices in that body, and painted all the great men of his day. His own portrait by himself is in the Uffizi.
A portrait of the famous tutor, and afterwards prime minister, of Louis XV. It is eminently the "pacific Fleury," who strove to keep France out of war and starved her army and navy when she was forced into it, that we see in this amiable old gentleman—the scholar and member of the Academy, who completed what is now the National Library of France—rather than the statesman. A similar picture is in the Wallace Collection (No. 130).