Jean Petitot, Portrait of Cardinal Mazarin, ca. 1660

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Jean Petitot, Portrait of Cardinal Mazarin, ca. 1660,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.2102.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Jean Petitot, Portrait of Cardinal Mazarin, ca. 1660,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.2102.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This magisterial portrait of Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661) is perhaps the smallest known example of Jean Petitot’s depictions of this sitter, who was the chief minister to Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France.¹ Born Giulio Mazzarino in Italy in 1602, the future cardinal first went to France as an envoy for Pope Urban VII in 1634. He began to cultivate the trust of both the king and Cardinal Richelieu, the preeminent royal advisor. In 1638, Mazarin was appointed a cardinal and sent on long-term assignment in France.² Richelieu’s mentorship led to Mazarin being trusted with the political and cultural affairs of the realm.³

In 1642, Louis XIII and Richelieu died within just five months of each other, and Anne of Austria, as regent for her four-year-old son, Louis XIV, appointed Mazarin her chief advisor.⁴ Mazarin’s tenure, steering not only the French government but also the education of the young king, lasted until his death in 1661.⁵ As a prolific patron of the arts, the Italian curate was second in power only to his pupil, Louis XIV, who formed an absolute monarchy rather than replace Mazarin with a new chief minister.⁶

Petitot painted several miniatures of Mazarin using Pierre Mignard’s (1612–1695) oil portrait as a reference, which circulated widely as an engraving (Fig. 1). Following his usual practice, Petitot also probably had Mazarin sit for him once or twice to add realism and individuality to his portraits.⁷

This example must have been painted between 1658, around the time Mignard began his large-scale portrait, and Mazarin’s death in 1661.⁸ The miniature features Petitot’s signature rich coloring and is painted with his precise, exacting technique, with particular attention to the varying shades of bluish gray and brown in each strand of hair and the transparency of Mazarin’s white linen collar against his red cassock. Fine details such as embroidery along the shoulder and covered buttons with hand-worked buttonholes remain distinct. The scarlet silk of the cardinal’s robe was said to signify the wearer’s willingness to shed his own blood for the Catholic faith.⁹

This seventeenth-century miniature was packaged for sale in the nineteenth century in a richly chased gold and blue enamel frame, probably once the lid of an ornamental box. Nineteenth-century collectors were keen to acquire portraits of well-known sitters; some even filled entire galleries with portraits of historical figures.¹⁰ Paired with the period’s taste for attractive small boxes, Mazarin’s exquisite portrait would have made an appealing quarry for a discerning collector.

Notes

1. We are grateful to Bernd Pappe, who examined this miniature and offered his insights on the artist attribution and date during a July 23–25, 2023, visit. Notes in NAMA curatorial object files.

2. Geoffrey Treasure, Mazarin: The Crisis of Absolutism in France (New York: Routledge, 1995), 37.

3. Mazarin served as an intermediary between Richelieu, an avid patron of the arts, and Italian artists like Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), introducing Italian Baroque art to France. This episode is discussed in Andrea Bacchi, Catherine Hess, and Jennifer Montagu, Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2008), 251–52. See also Hilliard Goldfarb, Richelieu: Art and Power (Montreal: Exhibitions International, 2002), 261–62.

4. Anne Thackray, “Mazarin family,” Benezit Dictionary of Artists, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T056245.

5. He led France through a fraught civil war, known as the Fronde, and wars abroad with Spain and Austria. These events are addressed, through the lens of Mazarin’s life, throughout Treasure, Mazarin. For further historical context on this tumultuous era, refer to the classic albeit provocative study by Orest Ranum, The Fronde: A French Revolution 1647–1652 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993); and more recently, David Parrott, 1652: The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), which focuses on the final year of the conflict.

6. On Mazarin’s artistic patronage, see Isabelle de Conihout and Patrick Michele, Mazarin: Les Lettres et les Arts (Paris: Bibliothèque Mazarine, 2006).

7. There are several known miniatures of Mazarin after this portrait by Petitot. Most spectacularly, in its original frame by Gilles Légaré: Jean Petitot, Portrait of Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661), 1658–60, enamel painted on gold, 1 3/8 x 1 13/16 in. (3.5 x 3 cm), Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, https://www.mahmah.ch/collection/oeuvres/petit-portrait/ad-2261; and Jean Petitot, Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661), ca. 1661, enamel, 1 x 7/8 in. (2.5 x 2.2 cm), Royal Collection, United Kingdom, https://www.rct.uk/collection/421372/cardinal-mazarin-1602-1661. A version was sold at Osenat, Fontainebleau, in 2018; “L’Empire à Fontainebleau, souvenirs historiques,” Drouot, March 25, 2018, lot 78, https://www.gazette-drouot.com/en/lots/8589629-jean-1er-petitot-dit--c2-ab-le. A final miniature in a private collection is illustrated in Celine Cachaud, “Framing Miniatures in the 17th Century: The Golden Age of ‘la boîte à portrait,’” The Frame Blog, July 11, 2018, https://theframeblog.com/tag/jean-i-petitot.

8. Pierre Mignard, Cardinal Mazarin, 1658–60, oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 21 3/4 in. (65 x 55.5 cm), Musée Condé, Chantilly.

9. Herbert Norris, Church Vestments: Their Origin and Development (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2017), 162.

10. This trend first originated in the eighteenth century with antiquarian collectors like Horace Walpole, whose home at Strawberry Hill documented his obsessive acquisition of historical faces and relics. For more on Walpole, see Michael Snodin, ed., Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Pierre Mignard, Cardinal Mazarin, 1658–60, oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 21 3/4 in. (65 x 55.5 cm), Musée Condé, Chantilly.

Jean Petitot, Portrait of Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661), 1658–60, enamel painted on gold, 1 3/8 x 1 13/16 in. (3.5 x 3 cm), Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva.

Jean Petitot, Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661), ca. 1661, enamel, 1 x 7/8 in. (2.5 x 2.2 cm), Royal Collection, United Kingdom.

Jean Petitot, Portrait of Cardinal de Mazarin, ca. 1658–61, enamel on gold, 15/16 x 3/4 in. (2.4 x 2.2 cm), sold at Osenat, Fontainebleau, March 25, 2018, lot 78.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 23.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 265.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 23, p. 14, (repro.).