Jacint Rigau-Ros i Serra (; 18 July 1659 – 29 December 1743), known in French as Hyacinthe Rigaud (), was a Spanish-French

baroque painter Baroque painting is the painting associated with the Baroque cultural movement. The movement is often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and Catholic Revival,Louis XIV and other members of the French nobility.

Biography

Rigaud was born in

Perpignan Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...

, then part of the Crown of Aragon, a few months before Spain ceded the city to France under the Treaty of the Pyrenees (7 November 1659). His family, the ''Rigau'', were

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

; he was the son of a tailor, the grandson of painter-gilders from

Roussillon Roussillon ( , , ; ca, Rosselló ; oc, Rosselhon ) is a historical province of France that largely corresponded to the County of Roussillon and part of the County of Cerdagne of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is part of the reg ...

, and the elder brother of another painter ( Gaspard). Rigaud was baptised with his Catalan name in the old

Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Perpignan Perpignan Cathedral (french: Basilique-Cathédrale de Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Perpignan; ca, Catedral de Sant Joan Baptista de Perpinyà) is a Roman Catholic cathedral, and a national monument of France, located in the town of Perpignan in Langu ...

on 20 July 1659, two days after his birth at rue de la Porte-d'Assaut. His baptismal name was ''Jyacintho Rigau or Jacint Rigau i Ros'' This is sometimes transliterated as ''Híacint Francesc Honrat Mathias Pere Martyr Andreu Joan Rigau'' After the

and the

Cerdanya Cerdanya () or often La Cerdanya ( la, Ceretani or ''Ceritania''; french: Cerdagne; es, Cerdaña), is a natural comarca and historical region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain. Historically it was one of the counties ...

were ceded to France the following 7 November owing to the Treaty of the Pyrenees, the Rigau remained in Roussillon, and became French subjects. He was trained in tailoring in his father's workshop, but perfected his skills as a painter under

Antoine Ranc Antoine Ranc (c. 1634–1716) was a French painter. Life Antoine Ranc was born at Montpellier around 1634 to a modest family. He became a student of the Flemish artist Jean Zueil, nicknamed "le français" (the Frenchman), who probably brought ...

at Montpellier from 1671 onwards, before moving to Lyon four years later. It was in these cities that he became familiar with Flemish, Dutch and Italian painting, particularly that of

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

, Van Dyck,

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

and Titian, whose works he later collected. Arriving in Paris in 1681, he won the prestigious scholarship known as the prix de Rome in 1682, but on the advice of Charles Le Brun did not make the trip to Rome which was included in the scholarship. Rigaud was received into the

Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (; en, "Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture") was founded in 1648 in Paris, France. It was the premier art institution of France during the latter part of the Ancien Régime until it was abol ...

in 1710, and he rose to the top of this institution before retiring from it in 1735. Since Rigaud's paintings captured very exact likenesses along with the subject's costumes and background details, his paintings are considered precise records of contemporary fashions.

Family

Hyacinthe's father, Josep Matias Pere Ramon Rigau, was a tailor (''sastre'' in Catalan) in the parish of Saint-Jean de Perpignan, "as well as a painter", descended from a line of well-established artists in the Perpignanian basin who had been commissioned to decorate several tabernacles and other panels for liturgical use. Few of these have survived to the present ( Palau-del-Vidre,

, Montalba-d'Amélie, Joch...). Hyacinthe's grandfather, Jacinto ''major'', and even more Jacinto's father, Honorat ''minor'', were heads of the family and the local art world from 1570 to 1630; probably as much as gilders as painters, since in their studios were to be found "many prints and books treating on the art of painting, and other things, such as brushes and palettes for painting". Working for the collège Saint-Éloi in his city since 1560, and acting as representative of its guild of painters and gilders, on 22 November 1630 Jacinto ''major'' and other gilders and colleagues participated in the development of the statutes and minutes of the city's collège Saint-Luc . Honorat ''minor'' is generally identified as the painter of ''The Canonisation of Saint Hyacinthe'', formerly in Perpignan's Dominican convent and now at Joch, the tabernacle of the church of Palau-del-Vidre (28 March 1609) and the retable at Montalba near Amélie-les-Bains. The father of Honorat ''minor'' is generally identified as the painter of the retable of Saint-Ferréol (1623) in the église Saint-Jacques de Perpignan and formerly in the couvent des Minimes, whilst Honorat ''major'' is usually identified as the painter of the paintings of the retable of the église Saint-Jean-l'Évangéliste at

Peyrestortes Peyrestortes (; ca, Paretstortes) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. Geography Peyrestortes is located in the canton of Le Ribéral and in the arrondissement of Perpignan. History Battle On 17 Sept ...

. On 13 March 1647, Hyacinthe's father Matias ''Rigau'', married Thérèse Faget (1634–1655), daughter of a carpenter. Widowed shortly after, he decided to speedily remarry, to Maria Serra, daughter of a Perpignan textile merchant (''pentiner'' in Catalan), on 20 December 1655. In 1665, he acquired a house "en lo carrer de las casas cremades" (now rue de l'Incendie, near the cathedral) and received the income from a parcel of vineyards in the Bompas territory. By his second marriage, he also acquired a house on place de l'Huile, but he soon sold it.

Journey to Lyon

Little is known about Rigaud's activities in Lyon, due to the lack of surviving documents. However, as per tradition, artists from

Montpellier Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of ...

had strong ties with this city, as had, for example, Samuel Boissière who was trained in there, in Lyon. The identity of Rigaud's future depicted models shows that he worked for the city's cloth merchants, whose flourishing trade had long since given the city its profitable income. Even if they had only been registered from 1681 onwards, the date when he moved to Paris, France, Paris, his "youthful" portraits were probably Wiktionary:predate, pre-dated, like those of Antoine Domergue, the king's councillor and provincial governor of Lyon, in 1686, and "Mr Sarazin de Lion", of a famous dynasty of bankers of Switzerland, Swiss origins, in 1685. Rigaud's portrait of Jean de Brunenc, painted in 1687, a silk merchant, banker and consul of Lyon, assembles all the ingredients for which the painter was later successful. In her thesis on the engraving, engravers from the Drevet family, Gilberte Levallois-Clavel revealed certain aspects of the private relations between Rigaud and Pierre Drevet; their friendship came about at the beginning of the 1700s, after the painter produced a portrait of the engraver, in which he depicted himself as well. In 1681, when Hyacinthe Rigaud decided to move to Paris, inspired by Drevet who was also attracted to the capital, he had already established a good reputation amongst the local clientele, from Switzerland to Aix-en-Provence. Christ expiant par Hyacinthe Rigaud

Going back to the artist's biography, Dezallier d'Argenville states that one of Rigaud's main reasons for his 1695 voyage was to paint his mother's portrait: "He painted her from many angles, and had her marble bust made by the notable Antoine Coysevox, Coysevox, which was his cabinet's ornament for the rest of his life". In his first will, dated 30 May 1707, the artist left the bust to the Louis, Grand Dauphin, Grand Dauphin, Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV's son, though the sculpture would then be left to the Academy which explains its presence in the Louvre. Also in the document, Rigaud bequeathed the portrait containing the two profiles of Maria Serra to the elder son of his brother Gaspard, named Hyacinthe. In reality, Rigaud painted a second painting, bearing the three stances presented to Coysevox: an oval painting kept in a private collection, copied by Théodore Géricault, Géricault, in Dijon, France, Dijon, and the subject of one of Drevet's engravings. He also applied sketches of his sister Claire, accompanied by her husband and their first daughter, to the canvas. The year 1695 also saw the production of two versions of ''Christ expiant sur la Croix'', with a distinct Flemish Baroque painting, Flemish influence, proof of Rigaud's rare incursion into the domain of historical depictions or the "great genre". He bequeathed his mother the first version which would then, at her death, be left to the Grands Augustins convent in

, and gave the second, in 1722, to the Dominican Order, Dominican convent of his city of birth. In spring 1696, Hyacinthe Rigaud returned to Paris, where he painted one of his most important portraits of the year. This was in fact solicited by the Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, duke of Saint-Simon, to depict Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé, an abbot, using a skillful subterfuge that remains notable in the history of painting. In 1709, he was made a noble by his hometown of Perpignan. In 1727, he was made a knight of the Order of Saint Michael. Following the death of ''directeur'' Louis de Boullogne on 28 November 1733, Rigaud proposed that the four rectors of the Académie, Nicolas de Largillière, Claude-Guy Hallé, Guillaume Coustou the Elder, Guillaume Coustou, and himself, rotate the post. This oligarchy would persist until the election of Coustou as sole director on 5 February 1735. Rigaud died in Paris on 29 December 1743 at the age of 84. P1050003 Paris II rue Louis-le-grand Hyacinthe Rigaud rwk.JPG, House. P1050004 Hyacinthe Rigaud plaque rue Louis-le-grand rwk.JPG, Plaque.

Clientele

He was one of the most important portrait painters during the reign of King Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV. His instinct for impressive poses and grand presentations precisely suited the tastes of the royal personages, ambassadors, clerics, courtiers, and financiers who sat for him. Rigaud owes his celebrity to the faithful support he received from the four generations of House of Bourbon, Bourbons whose portraits he painted; namely King Louis XIV, next his son Louis, Grand Dauphin, then the King's grandson (the Grand Dauphin's son) Louis, Duke of Burgundy (also called the Petit Dauphin), and finally the Grand Dauphin's grandson (the Petit Dauphin's son), who became the next king—Louis XV, who succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV in 1715. He garnered the core of his clientele among the richest circles as well as among the bourgeois, financiers, nobles, industrialists and government ministers, also courting all the major ambassadors of his time and several European monarchs. His œuvre reads as a near-complete portrait gallery of the chief movers in France from 1680 to 1740. Some of that œuvre (albeit a minority) also includes those of more humble origins – Rigaud's friends, fellow artists or simple businessmen. Rigaud is inseparable from his best-known work, a 1701 painting of Louis XIV in his coronation costume which today hangs in the Louvre in Paris, as well as the second copy also requested by Louis XIV that now hangs at the Palace of Versailles. He is renowned for his portrait paintings of Louis XIV, the royalty and nobility of Europe, and members of their courts and considered one of the most notable French portraitists of the classical period. For Jacques Thuillier, professor at the Collège de France: According to the French art historian Louis Hourticq, True "photographs",Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville 1745, p. 318 faces that Denis Diderot, Diderot called "letters of recommendation written in the common language of all men", Rigaud's works today populate the world's major museums.

Legacy

Rigaud's works today populate the world's major museums. The exact number of paintings he produced remains in dispute, since he left a highly detailed catalogue but also more than a thousand different models which specialists agree he used. To these may be added the large number of copies in Rigaud's s:fr:Le Livre de Raison du peintre Hyacinthe Rigaud, book of accounts, without even mentioning the hundreds of other paintings rediscovered since the accounts' publication in 1919. Rigaud painted many important figures in the world of art such as the sculptors Martin Desjardins, Desjardins (to whom, as an old friend, he delivered three successive portraits), François Girardon, Girardon and Antoine Coysevox, Coysevox; the painters Joseph Parrocel, Charles de La Fosse, La Fosse and Pierre Mignard, Mignard; the architects Robert de Cotte, De Cotte, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Hardouin-Mansart and Jacques Gabriel, Gabriel. He also painted portraits of poets such as Jean de La Fontaine, La Fontaine or Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Boileau, as well as religious figures such as the André-Hercule de Fleury, cardinal de Fleury and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Bossuet; many influential archbishops and bishops paid large sums of money for a portrait. The , a museum dedicated to Rigaud's artwork, opened in Perpignan in 1833. The museum has since expanded to include works by Aristide Maillol, Raoul Dufy, and other artists. It received over 65,000 visitors in 2017 following its renovation and a temporary exhibition dedicated to Pablo Picasso, Picasso.

Selected works

*Portrait of Graf Philipp Ludwig Wenzel von Sinzendorf, 1712, oil on canvas, , Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna *Portrait of Philippe de Dangeau, Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau, 1702, oil on canvas, , Palace of Versailles, Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles *Portrait of Louis XIV, 1701, oil on canvas, , Musée du Louvre, Paris *Portrait of Louis XIV, c. 1700, oil on canvas, Centre Block, Parliament of Canada, Ottawa *ditto, oil on canvas, , Museo del Prado, Madrid *ditto, oil on canvas, 1694 (full shot portrait), Musée du Louvre, Paris *ditto, oil on canvas, 1715 (full shot portrait, "State Portrait"), Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles *Portrait of the artist's mother, 1695, oil on canvas, , Musée du Louvre, Paris *Portrait of Everhard Jabach, 1688, oil on canvas, , Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne *Studies of Spaniels And Whippets, And A Study of a White Headdress, oil on canvas *Portrait of Louis Bossuet, location unknownJ. Roman, ''Le livre de raison du peintre Hyacinthe Rigaud'', Paris, 1919, p. 66 *Portrait of a Scholar, oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia *Portrait of Pierre Imbert Drevet, c. 1700, oil on canvas, , Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon, France *Portrait of Louis XV of France at the age 5, wearing the Coronation Robes, 1715, oil on canvas, Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles *Portrait of Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, c. 1719, oil on canvas, Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles *Portrait of La comtesse de Selles Marguerite-Henriette de Labriffe , 1712, oil on canvas *Portrait of Charles Auguste d'Allonville de Louville, Marquis de Louville, 1708, oil on canvas, private collection *Portrait of Frederick IV of Denmark, Nationalhistoriske Museum, Frederiksborg Palace, Denmark *Portrait of Sébastien Bourdon, drawing, 1731, , Städel, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main *Portrait of Louis Antoine de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Marquis d'Antin, c. 1710 *Portrait of Augustus II the Strong, oil on canvas, 1715, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden *Portrait of Martin Desjardins, Martin van der Bogaert, drawing, c. 1700, , Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main *Portrait of a young scholar, drawing, 1685, , Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main *Portrait of Cardinal Henri Oswald de La Tour d'Auvergne, 1732, oil on canvas, , private collection. *Portrait of Nicolas Le Camus, drawing, c. 1701, , Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main

Paintings

File:1713 - Robert de Cotte (Louvre).jpg, Robert de Cotte (1656-1735) File:1689 portrait of a young Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres, Regent of France by Hyacinthe Rigaud.jpg, Portrait of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres (1674–1723) File:Hyacinthe Rigaud - Louis de France, Dauphin (1661-1711), dit le Grand Dauphin - Google Art Project.jpg, Louis, Grand Dauphin, Louis of France, Dauphin (1661-1711), "''Le Grand Dauphin''" File:Hyacinthe Rigaud - Gio. Francesco II Brignole-Sale - Google Art Project.jpg, Giovanni Francesco II Brignole Sale, Doge of Genoa File:Le Brun par Rigaud.jpg, Portrait of Charles Le Brun File:Portræt af kong Frederik IV som prins.jpg, Frederick IV of Denmark as Crown Prince File:Hyacinthe Rigaud (d'après) Louis XV.jpg, Portrait of Louis XV, (1727–1729), Versailles File:1715 - Auguste III de Pologne.jpg, Augustus III of Poland File:La Menasseuse 1709.jpg, La Menasseuse Suzanne de Boubers de Bernâtre.JPG, Portrait of Suzanne de Bourbers de Bernâtre File:Hyacinthe Rigaud (French) - Charles de Saint-Albin, Archbishop of Cambrai - Google Art Project.jpg, Charles de Saint-Albin, Archbishop of Cambrai File:Portrait of François Marie de Broglie, Duke of Broglie, Marshal of France (member of the circle of Hyacinthe Rigaud).jpg, Portrait of the François Marie de Broglie, 1st Duke of Broglie, Duke of Broglie (1671–1745), half-length, in armor with a velvet-lined, leopard skin mantle and the Sash of the Order of Holy Spirit, the baton of a Marshal of France in his left hand

References

Notes

Citations

External links

Musee-rigaud
- Official webpage of the Rigaud Museum.
Hyacinthe-rigaud
- Complete catalogue of Rigaud's works by French art historian Stéphan Perreau {{DEFAULTSORT:Rigaud, Hyacinthe 1659 births 1743 deaths 17th-century French painters French male painters 18th-century French painters French portrait painters Prix de Rome for painting French Baroque painters 18th-century French male artists Members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture