Philippe de Champaigne 1601–1674
NG 1449 
Cardinal de Richelieu

Humphrey Wine, 2001

Extracted from:
Humphrey Wine, The Seventeenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2001).

1633–40

Oil on canvas, 259.5 × 178.5 cm (cut down along left edge)

Once inscribed with a false signature: P. DE CHAMPAIGNE¹

Provenance

Anon. sale, Paris, Roux du Cantal, 22ff. April 1834 (lot 16, bought in at 600 francs);² anon. (Roux du Cantal and others) sale, Paris, Henry, 17–18 February 1835 (lot 12, bought in at 400 francs); Thomas Henry deceased sale, Paris, George, 23–25 May 1836 (lot 38, sold 250 francs);³ in the collection of the comte d’Espagnac in his hôtel at 15 rue d’Aguessau, Paris, by 1838;⁴ comte d’Espagnac sale, Paris, Bonnefons de Lavialle, 4–8 May 1847 (lot 154);⁵ comte d’Espagnac sale, Paris, Pillet, 1–3 March 1866 (lot 186, bought in at 12,050 francs);⁶ comte Henri d’Espagnac sale, Paris, Pillet, 8 May 1868 (lot 7, 10,600 francs);⁷ in the collection of Yolanda Marie Louise Lyne‐Stephens (1813–94) at Lynford Hall, Norfolk, by 8 March 1887;⁸ Lyne‐Stephens sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, 9–17 May 1895 (11 May) (lot 361, £283 10s. to Charles Butler, as from ‘the Espagnal [sic] Sale, 1868’); presented by Charles Butler⁹ in 1895,¹⁰ and hung ‘temporarily on the staircase of the National Gallery’.¹¹

Related Works¹²

Paintings

• (1) The Royal Collection. Oil on canvas, 207.2 × 146.3 cm (Dorival 1976, no. 208);
• (2) Destroyed in 1945, formerly in the collection of the comte du Bourg de Bozas and originally in the Library of the Sorbonne. Oil on canvas, 261 × 171 cm (Dorival 1976, no. 393 and see idem, p. 114).

Drawing

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes (côté B6 Réserve, folio, école française). (Dorival 1976, no. 206, where proposed as a study for the engraving by Bignon, see below.)

Prints

• (1) By François Bignon ( c. 1620–after June 1671)¹³ in 1650 after a drawing by Zacharie Heince ( c. 1611–69) for Z. Heince and F. Bignon, Les portraits des hommes illustres françois qui sont peints dans la galerie du Palais‐Cardinal de Richelieu, Paris 1650, pl. 22, and for Marc Vulson de la Colombière, Les Portraits des hommes illustres françois, Paris 1655, pl. 23. After the full‐length portrait once in the Galerie des Hommes Illustres in the Palais‐Cardinal (later Palais‐Royal). The figure is like that in NG 1449, but the background is plain. Dorival 206 bis and 389;¹⁴
• (2) by anon. for Vulson de la Colombière, Les Portraits des [page 25][page 26]hommes illustres françois, Paris 1668, opposite p. 292, a crudely engraved version of Print (1);¹⁵
• (3) Adrien Nargeot (b.1837, Paris) is said to have engraved a full‐length standing portrait of Richelieu holding his biretta after Philippe de Champaigne. The engraving, not necessarily after the composition in NG 1449, was published in 1861.¹⁶

Technical Notes

There is a repaired tear centre right and some minor losses. Overall, however, the condition is good in spite of some damage along the top, bottom and right‐hand edges as a result of the painting once having been fitted on to a smaller stretcher. The painting has been cut down by at least 4 cm along the left‐hand edge. These damages and this reduction occurred before the Gallery’s acquisition of the picture in 1895 when it was on its present, nineteenth‐century stretcher. (Marks on the surface of the painting show it once to have been on a stretcher with diagonally braced corners, a typical seventeenth‐century construction.)

The support is made up of three pieces of moderately fine plain‐weave canvas joined horizontally. The ground is a greyish buff colour. NG 1449 was last cleaned and restored in 1971, at which time it was also double‐lined. Analysis of the paint media has indicated the use of a mixture of poppy and linseed oils in the grey paint of the top moulding of the plinth of a pilaster, and linseed oil with pine resin added in the red from a fold in Richelieu’s robe.¹⁷ The red dye in the latter sample was found to be that extracted from the lac insect.¹⁸ There is a small pentimento along the top edge of Richelieu’s right hand.

Discussion

Armand‐Jean du Plessis (1585–1642), cardinal and duc de Richelieu, was the outstanding political figure on the European stage of the first half of the seventeenth century. Originally destined for a military career, which he abandoned when his brother Alphonse, already Bishop of Luçon, retired to a monastery, he took Holy Orders and was himself consecrated as bishop of the same see (in succession to his brother and his great‐uncle) in 1607. His political career began in 1614 and for several years he allied himself to the circle around Louis XIII’s mother, Marie de’ Medici, thanks to whose resolve he was created a cardinal in 1622. He became chief minister to Louis XIII in 1624, an office which he retained until his death. Richelieu was made a duke in 1631 and appointed to the Order of the Holy Spirit (whose decoration he is shown wearing in both NG 798 and NG 1449) in 1633. He amassed enormous personal wealth and built for himself the Palais‐Cardinal (now the Palais‐Royal) just north of the Louvre, and a château at Rueil which was his favourite country residence. He also substantially rebuilt the ancestral château of Richelieu in Poitou – for one room of which he acquired paintings by Poussin (see NG 42 and 6477) and others – and founded the town of Richelieu nearby. As well as commissioning paintings by his contemporaries, he acquired numerous pictures by older masters, sculpture and other objets – perhaps including the chair at the right NG 1449 which would have been known as a fauteuil and whose high cushion may itself have denoted high office.¹⁹ As has often been noted,²⁰ for a seventeenth‐century prince of the Church in France to have himself portrayed standing – in the manner of secular princes – as distinct from seated, was a daring innovation and was presumably intended to underline Richelieu’s role as homme d’état.

There are seven extant full‐length painted portraits of Richelieu showing him standing.²¹ Of these, that now in the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris, and dated 1634 (Dorival 1976, no. 204) and that in a private collection recently published by Dorival (Dorival 1992, no. 95), and dated by him 1633–4, show him wearing his biretta. The remainder show him holding his biretta in his right hand and fall into two groups (although in each case the background is different). The first group comprises NG 1449 and the picture in the Royal Collection (see Related Works) which show Richelieu holding up his cape with his left hand, and the second group comprises the remaining three (Dorival 1976, nos 209, 211 and 212), respectively at the Louvre, the Chancellerie de l’Université, Paris (fig. 1), and the National Museum, Warsaw, and show Richelieu gesturing with his left hand. None of these five is dated, but in all of them Richelieu is wearing the cross of the Order of the Holy Spirit, conferred on him on 14 May 1633, so they must have been completed after that date. Félibien says that the last portrait Champaigne made of the cardinal during his lifetime was in 1640.²² It has been proposed as that now at the Chancellerie de l’Université, Paris, and so one of the group with the gesturing left hand.²³

According to a Mémoire des portrets de Monseigneur le cardinal duc de Richelieu, faicts par Philippe de Champaigne, peintre par le commandement de mondit seigneur drawn up in 1635, Champaigne had by that date painted four full‐length portraits of Richelieu.²⁴ Since, from their descriptions none could have been NG 1449, it seems reasonable to conclude that that painting must have been executed after 1635. The two extant portraits identifiable from the list of 1635, namely that now in the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris, and that showing him seated in the Musée Condé, Chantilly (Dorival 1976, no. 205), both show the cardinal wearing his biretta. The latter was not finished until 1636. This also suggests, as Dorival proposed,²⁵ that full‐length portraits of the cardinal holding his biretta did not appear until later. However, although none of the portraits described in the 1635 note corresponds with NG 1449, the two as yet unidentified could correspond to portraits of its type, that is to say, standing, full‐length and holding the biretta. Yet more relevant to the date of NG 1449 is the engraving by Bignon (fig. 2). This was one of a series of engravings reproducing the portraits which decorated the Galerie des Hommes Illustres of the Palais Cardinal, one of which was (immodestly) a portrait of the cardinal himself (see Prints (1) above).

The construction of the Galerie began in 1628²⁶ and the portraits seem to have been finished by 1636, the year in which Roland Desmarest (1584–1653) wrote an Elogia illustrium Gallorum quorum imagines in tabillis depictae cernuntur in porticu Ricelianarum aedium.²⁷ Although NG 1449 was not the [page 27] portrait at the Palais‐Cardinal,²⁸ it is clear that it is of a type in existence by 1636.

Two others of this type are recorded, that (destroyed in 1945) noted by Brice in 1684 as in the Sorbonne Library and which was probably a posthumous likeness of the cardinal, and that in the Royal Collection which bears an inscription evidently postdating Richelieu’s death. The inscription was painted later than the rest of the painting, but the position of the biretta appears not to have been finalised until after the space required for the inscription had been calculated. Hence the Royal Collection portrait was probably posthumous. In any event, evident studio participation in the painting of the drapery disqualifies it from being the prime version.²⁹ Consequently NG 1449 may have been the picture which Félibien relates was painted in 1640 and authorised by Richelieu to be kept in Champaigne’s studio as the model for other portraits. The provenance of NG 1449 neither confirms nor rules out the possibility, so one must examine whether it is correct, as has been proposed, that the picture now at the University of Paris (that is, Dorival 1976, no. 211) was the one retained in the studio.³⁰

The arguments in favour of that proposition are that of all the portraits of Richelieu it is the only one which Champaigne signed, and that it is the most finished and most carefully executed – hence it must be that to which Félibien referred as having been found ‘parfaitement beau’ by the cardinal. However, an artist would be unlikely to sign a painting which he kept in his studio, and there is no evidence that any of the other paintings which Champaigne signed were so retained by him. The few paintings he did sign were portraits, which would generally have been immediately delivered, and pictures of religious subjects known to have been commissioned from, or given by, the artist. On the other hand, if (and this has been doubted)³¹ the picture now at the Chancellerie de l’Université was that located in the cardinal’s bedroom by Vignier at the Château de Richelieu (as Dorival proposed), it could not be that in Champaigne’s studio at the artist’s death because, although Vignier’s description was published in 1676, that is, two years after Champaigne’s death, the publishing privilege for his book had been granted in 1665, making it likely that it was written during Champaigne’s lifetime.³² Accordingly, on the basis of the two (probably) posthumous full‐length portraits of Richelieu discussed above, the better candidate for Champaigne’s ‘parfaitement beau’ painting is NG 1449.

Nevertheless, the suggestion that NG 1449 may be the portrait mentioned by Félibien³³ must remain tentative, [page 28]given both the large number of other portraits by Champaigne (full‐length and otherwise) that once certainly existed.³⁴ Consequently the dating of NG 1449 to 1633–40 cannot for the time being be refined.

Dorival has suggested that the architecture of the background at the left of NG 1449 is similar to that of an arcade at Rueil and that the painting was therefore destined for that château (fig. 3).³⁵ Although it is not clear that there ever was a portrait of Richelieu by Champaigne at Rueil,³⁶ the tidy lawn surrounded by paving and the immaculately pruned trees shown in NG 1449 would surely not have looked out of place there (even if they did not precisely represent Rueil’s highly ordered gardens).³⁷ However, even if it could be established that the background view was of the gardens at Rueil, it would not necessarily follow that NG 1449 once came from there since, for example, in 1639 Richelieu commissioned a view of Rueil (among other landscapes) for the Palais‐Cardinal³⁸ where in addition one of the pictures recorded at his death was a view of the château of Richelieu.³⁹ Nevertheless, if the background shows Rueil, the fact that it was around 1638 that Richelieu was lavishing expenditure on its gardens would support that date or later for NG 1449. The suggestion has also been made that the background view shows the gardens of the Palais‐Cardinal, but this proposal, which has not been widely supported, seems unlikely.⁴⁰

In a preface to the 1868 d’Espagnac sale Théophile Gautier wrote an appreciation of NG 1449 referring to its being painted with ‘une intensité de vie, une affirmation de vérité, et comme on dirait aujourd’hui, un réalisme bien rare dans les portraits de grands personages…’

General References

Davies 1957, pp. 26–7; Dorival 1976, no. 207.

Notes