Jacques Marquet de Montbreton, baron de Norvins (Paris, 18 June 1769 - Paris, 30 July 1854) was a French politician and writer, also a soldier, lawyer and administrator. Born into a wealthy family of

tax farmer Farming or tax-farming is a technique of financial management in which the management of a variable revenue stream is assigned by legal contract to a third party and the holder of the revenue stream receives fixed periodic rents from the contract ...

s, after

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...

came to power, Norvins became and remained a firm supporter, serving as Napoleon's Chief of Police in French-occupied Rome from 1810-14.

Ingres portrait

A portrait of Jacques de Norvins in the

National Gallery, London The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

was painted by

Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( , ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...

in 1811–12, when the sitter was

's Chief of Police in Rome. Originally, instead of the curtain at the left, there was a fully painted bust of a boy's head on top of a small column. Probably this was a bust of Napoleon's son, who was known as the

King of Rome The king of Rome ( la, rex Romae) was the ruler of the Roman Kingdom. According to legend, the first king of Rome was Romulus, who founded the city in 753 BC upon the Palatine Hill. Seven legendary kings are said to have ruled Rome until 509 ...

. The presumption is that this was overpainted with the curtain after the fall of Napoleon, either by Ingres himself, or another artist. The bust can just be made out in the enlarged online photo, with its chin level with the sitter's hair-line; the top of the column was level with the middle of the sitter's ear. These may always have been (just) visible, or have become so by the paint becoming transparent with age. Few viewers of the painting would notice the bust without it being pointed out. Strictly speaking, these alterations might not be described as

pentimenti A pentimento (plural pentimenti), in painting, is "the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over". The word is , from the verb , meaning 'to repent'. Significance Pentimenti may show that ...

, because of the presumed lapse of time, and because another artist may have made the change.

Works

* ''Les Ruines et les monuments, poème dithyrambique'', 1806 * ''Sur la guerre actuelle et ses résultats'', 31 May 1815 * ''De l'intérêt de l'époque actuelle'', 1819 * ''Tableau de la Révolution française, depuis son origine jusqu'en 1814'', 1819 * ''L'Immortalité de l'âme, ou les Quatre âges religieux'', poème en 4 chants, 1822 * ''Portefeuille de 1813, ou Tableau politique et militaire renfermant, avec le récit des événements de cette époque, un choix de la correspondance inédite de l'empereur Napoléon et de celle de plusieurs personnages distingués, soit français, soit étrangers, pendant la première campagne de Saxe, l'armistice de Plesswitz, le congrès de Prague et la seconde campagne de Saxe'', 1825 * ''Histoire de Napoléon'', 1827 He was also (with Arnault,

Jay A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the Crow family (biology), family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For examp ...

and

Jouy Jouy may refer to: Communes in France * Jouy, Eure-et-Loir, in the Eure-et-Loir ''département'' *Jouy, Yonne, in the Yonne ''département'' *Jouy-aux-Arches, in the Moselle ''département'' *Jouy-en-Argonne, in the Meuse ''département'' *Jouy-en ...

) one of the authors of th
''Biographie des Contemporains''

References

Sources

* * Georges Hartmann, ''L'Hôtel, rue d'Anjou, où mourut La Fayette'', Extrait du ''Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique des VIII^e et XVII^e arrondissements'', Paris, Librairie ancienne Édouard Champion, 1921, pp. 23–24 French politicians 1769 births 1854 deaths French male writers {{France-nonfiction-writer-stub