17 Facts About Hyacinthe Rigaud

Hyacinthe Rigaud was trained in tailoring in his father's workshop, but perfected his skills as a painter under Antoine Ranc at Montpellier from 1671 onwards, before moving to Lyon four years later.

Hyacinthe Rigaud was received into the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1710, and he rose to the top of this institution before retiring from it in 1735.

Since Hyacinthe 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.

The identity of Hyacinthe 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.

In 1681, when Hyacinthe Rigaud decided to move to Paris, inspired by Drevet who was attracted to the capital, he had already established a good reputation amongst the local clientele, from Switzerland to Aix-en-Provence.

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, Hyacinthe Rigaud painted a second painting, bearing the three stances presented to Coysevox: an oval painting kept in a private collection, copied by Gericault, in Dijon, and the subject of one of Drevet's engravings.

Hyacinthe Rigaud applied sketches of his sister Claire, accompanied by her husband and their first daughter, to the canvas.

In spring 1696, Hyacinthe Rigaud returned to Paris, where he painted one of his most important portraits of the year.

Hyacinthe Rigaud was one of the most important portrait painters during the reign of King Louis XIV.

Hyacinthe Rigaud garnered the core of his clientele among the richest circles as well as among the bourgeois, financiers, nobles, industrialists and government ministers, courting all the major ambassadors of his time and several European monarchs.

Hyacinthe 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 requested by Louis XIV that now hangs at the Palace of Versailles.

Hyacinthe Rigaud 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.

Hyacinthe Rigaud was one of those French painters who knew the highest celebrity under the Ancien Regime.

On his death, Hyacinthe Rigaud left behind a gallery of major figures with whom our imagination now populates the galerie des Glaces; Hyacinthe Rigaud was necessary to the 'gloire' of Louis XIV and participated in this shining of a reign whose majesty he fixed [in paint].

Hyacinthe Rigaud painted many important figures in the world of art such as the sculptors Desjardins, Girardon and Coysevox; the painters Joseph Parrocel, La Fosse and Mignard; the architects De Cotte, Hardouin-Mansart and Gabriel.

Hyacinthe Rigaud painted portraits of poets such as La Fontaine or Boileau, as well as religious figures such as the cardinal de Fleury and Bossuet; many influential archbishops and bishops paid large sums of money for a portrait.