Editing Hyacinthe Rigaud (section)

==Clientele==
[[File:Hyacinthe Rigaud - Louis XIV, roi de France (1638-1715) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|250px|''[[Portrait of Louis XIV]]'', King of France and Navarre, 1701. This piece is arguably Rigaud's most famous work.]] 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|Bourbon]]s 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,<ref>Paris, [[musée du Louvre]], Inv.7492)</ref> as well as the second copy also requested by Louis XIV that now hangs at the [[Palace of Versailles]].<ref>[http://www.chateauversailles.fr/en/un_chef_d_oeuvre_35.php Découverte du Château de Versailles: offre culturelle du Château de Versailles<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060826054100/http://www.chateauversailles.fr/en/un_chef_d_oeuvre_35.php |date=26 August 2006 }}</ref>
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: {{cquote|Hyacinthe Rigaud was one of those French painters who knew the highest celebrity under the Ancien Régime. This admiration was deserved both for the surprising abundance of his work and for its constant perfection.<ref>{{in lang|fr}} [http://www.archivesdefrance.culture.gouv.fr/action-culturelle/celebrations-nationales/2009/arts/hyacinthe-rigaud/ Jacques Thuillier, professor at the Collège de France, member of the Haut comité des célébrations nationales]</ref>}}
According to the French art historian [[Louis Hourticq]], {{cquote|On his death, Rigaud left behind a gallery of major figures with whom our imagination now populates the [[galerie des Glaces]]; Rigaud was necessary to the 'gloire' of Louis XIV and participated in this shining of a reign whose majesty he fixed [in paint].<ref>{{in lang|fr}} Louis Hourticq, De Poussin à Watteau, Paris, 1921</ref>}}
True "photographs",<ref name=Dez318>Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville 1745, p. 318</ref> faces that [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] called "letters of recommendation written in the common language of all men",<ref>Jacques Proust, "Diderot et la Physiognomonie", ''CAIEF'', 13, 1961, p.317–319.</ref> Rigaud's works today populate the world's major museums.