This portrait is typical of Rigaud’s work at the turn of the century, when the extravagance and grandeur of late seventeenth century portraiture was giving way to the more elegant and lighter style of the earlier eighteenth century, as is seen in the work of Nicolas de Largillierre. The sitter has not been identified, but is likely to come from one of the administrative classes, which proliferated in France in the later years of the reign of Louis XIV.

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