The old view that the Lares were the deified ancestors of the family has been rejected lately by Wissowa, who holds that the Lar was originally the protecting spirit of a man’s lot of arable land, with a shrine at the compitum, i.e. the spot where the path bounding his arable met that of another holding; and thence found his way into the house.
In addition to the manuals of Marquardt and Preller-Jordan, and Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, see A. de Marchi, Il Culto privato di Roma antica (1896-1903), p. 28 foll.; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer (1902), p. 148 foll.; Archiv für Religionswissenschaft (1904, p. 42 foll.) and W. Warde Fowler in the same periodical (1906; p. 529).
LA RÉVELLIÈRE-LÉPEAUX, LOUIS MARIE DE (1753-1824), French politician, member of the Directory, the son of J. B. de la Révellière, was born at Montaign (Vendée), on the 24th of August 1753. The name of Lépeaux he adopted from a small property belonging to his family, and he was known locally as M. de Lépeaux. He studied law at Angers and Paris, being called to the bar in 1775. A deputy to the states-general in 1789, he returned at the close of the session to Angers, where with his school-friends J. B. Leclerc and Urbain René Pilastre he sat on the council of Maine-et-Loire, and had to deal with the first Vendéen outbreaks. In 1792 he was returned by the department to the Convention, and on the 19th of November he proposed the famous decree by which France offered protection to foreign nations in their struggle for liberty. Although La Révellière-Lépeaux voted for the death of Louis XVI., he was not in general agreement with the extremists. Proscribed with the Girondins in 1793 he was in hiding until the revolution of 9.10 Thermidor (27th and 28th of July 1794). After serving on the commission to prepare the initiation of the new constitution he became in July 1795 president of the Assembly, and shortly afterwards a member of the Committee of Public Safety. His name stood first on the list of directors elected, and he became president of the Directory. Of his colleagues he was in alliance with Jean François Rewbell and to a less degree with Barras, but the greatest of his fellow-directors, Lazare Carnot, was the object of his undying hatred. His policy was marked by a bitter hostility to the Christian religion, which he proposed to supplant as a civilizing agent by theophilanthropy, a new religion invented by the English deist David Williams. The credit of the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor (4th of September 1797), by which the allied directors made themselves supreme, La Révellière arrogated to himself in his Mémoires, which in this as in other matters must be read with caution. Compelled to resign by the revolution of 30 Prairial (18th of June 1799) he lived in retirement in the country, and even after his return to Paris ten years later took no part in public affairs. He died on the 27th of March 1824.
The Mémoires of La Révellière-Lépeaux were edited by R. D. D’Angers (Paris, 3 vols., 1895). See also E. Charavay, La Révellière-Lépeaux et ses mémoires (1895) and A. Meynier, Un Représentant de la bourgeoisie angevine (1905).
LARGENTIÈRE, a town of south-eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Ardèche, in the narrow valley of the Ligne, 29 m. S.W. of Privas by road. Pop. (1906) 1690. A church of the 12th, 13th and 15th centuries and the old castle of the bishops of Viviers, lords of Largentière, now used as a hospital, are the chief buildings. The town is the seat of a sub-prefect and of a tribunal of first instance; and has silk-mills, and carries on silk-spinning, wine-growing and trade in fruit and silk. It owes its name to silver-mines worked in the vicinity in the middle ages.
LARGILLIÈRE, NICOLAS (1656-1746), French painter, was born at Paris on the 20th of October 1656. His father, a merchant, took him to Antwerp at the age of three, and while a lad he spent nearly two years in London. The attempt to turn his attention to business having failed, he entered, some time after his return to Antwerp, the studio of Goubeau, quitting this at the age of eighteen to seek his fortune in England, where he was befriended by Lely, who employed him for four years at Windsor. His skill attracted the notice of Charles II., who wished to retain him in his service, but the fury aroused against Roman Catholics by the Rye House Plot alarmed Largillière, and he went to Paris, where he was well received by Le Brun and Van der Meulen. In spite of his Flemish training, his reputation, especially as a portrait-painter, was soon established; his brilliant colour and lively touch attracted all the celebrities of the day—actresses, public men and popular preachers flocking to his studio. Huet, bishop of Avranches, Cardinal de Noailles, the Duclos and President Lambert, with his beautiful wife and daughter, are amongst his most noted subjects. It is said that James II. recalled Largillière to England on his accession to the throne in 1685, that he declined the office of keeper of the royal collections, but that, during a short stay in London, he painted portraits of the king, the queen and the prince of Wales. This last is impossible, as the birth of the prince did not take place till 1688; the three portraits, therefore, painted by Largillière of the prince in his youth must all have been executed in Paris, to which city he returned some time before March 1686, when he was received by the Academy as a member, and presented as his diploma picture the fine portrait of Le Brun, now in the Louvre. He was received as an historical painter; but, although he occasionally produced works of that class (“Crucifixion,” engraved by Roettiers), and also treated subjects of still life, it was in historical portraits that he excelled. Horace Walpole states that he left in London those of Pierre van der Meulen and of Sybrecht. Several of his works are at Versailles. The church of St Étienne du Mont at Paris contains the finest example of Largillière’s work when dealing with large groups of figures; it is an ex voto offered by the city to St Geneviève, painted in 1694, and containing portraits of all the leading officers of the municipality. Largillière passed through every post of honour in the Academy, until in 1743 he was made chancellor. He died on the 20th of March 1746. Jean Baptiste Oudry was the most distinguished of his pupils. Largillière’s work found skilful interpreters in Van Schuppen, Edelinck, Desplaces, Drevet, Pitou and other engravers.