Citation
Chicago:
Blythe Sobol, “Jean Petitot, Portrait of a Woman, 1670s,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.2104.
MLA:
Sobol, Blythe. “Jean Petitot, Portrait of a Woman, 1670s,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.2104.
Artist's Biography
See the artist’s biography in volume 4.
Catalogue Entry
This exquisite portrait, created by the master enamellist Jean Petitot, captures a lady of the French court during the reign of Louis XIV. Initially, she was identified as Louis’s first official mistress, Louise de la Vallière (1644–1710), most likely to intrigue collectors fascinated by the salacious history of Louis and his lovers.1On the life of Louise de la Vallière, see Antonia Fraser, Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (New York: Anchor, 2007), 71–148, 280; and Jean-Christian Petitfils, Louise de la Vallière (Paris: Perrin, 2011). However, countless portraits have been associated with Vallière and her rival, Athénaïs de Montespan, making it implausible for them to have sat for them all. Moreover, the complex process of enamel: Enamel miniatures originated in France before their introduction to the English court by enamellist Jean Petitot. Enamel was prized for its gloss and brilliant coloring—resembling the sheen and saturation of oil paintings—and its hardiness in contrast to the delicacy of light sensitive, water soluble miniatures painted with watercolor. Enamel miniatures were made by applying individual layers of vitreous pigment, essentially powdered glass, to a metal support, often copper but sometimes gold or silver. Each color required a separate firing in the kiln, beginning with the color that required the highest temperature; the more colors, the greater risk that the miniature would be damaged by the process. The technique was difficult to master, even by skilled practitioners, leading to its increased cost in contrast with watercolor miniatures. painting, in which each color had to be fired separately, led Petitot to use large-scale oil portraits by court painters like Pierre Mignard (1612–1695) as references, along with one or two sittings.2“Petitot, Jean,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T066745; Lada Nikolenko, Pierre Mignard: The Portrait Painter of the Grand Siècle (Munich: Nitz, 1983). This miniature bears no resemblance to any known portraits of Mlle. de la Vallière.3We are grateful to Bernd Pappe for his assistance in searching for possible references for this miniature. Bernd Pappe, July 23–25, notes in NAMA curatorial files.
While this lady’s identity remains a mystery, the fact that her portrait was commissioned from the favored royal miniaturist is evidence of her high social status. The miniature is meticulously painted on gold with white contra/counter-enamel: The reverse side or “verso” of an enamel miniature. When enameling on metal, both sides are usually coated with enamel to protect the metal sheet and layers of enamel from warping due to the extreme heat applied during firing, which causes the metal and enamel to expand and contract. Artists often (though not always) signed on the contra enamel., hallmarks of Petitot’s miniatures. His technical precision and meticulous attention to details of clothing and jewelry reflect the subject’s wealth and prominence at court.4Bernd Pappe has confirmed that this miniature was indeed painted by Petitot. Bernd Pappe, July 23–25, notes in NAMA curatorial files. She wears a string of large white pearls around her white neck, complemented by a brooch of rose-cut diamonds, matching diamond earrings, and large baroque pearls: Named and prized for the beauty of their imperfection, baroque pearls were named after the Portuguese word for imperfection, “barocco,” which went on to define the Baroque era. Baroque pearls have an irregular form, in contrast to the spherical shape common to modern pearls. Their appearance ranges from spheres with some minor undulations to ovoid, teardrop-shaped, asymmetrical, or lumpy.. Her attire features golden silk and white lace, showcasing French-made textiles, highly sought after at a time when the king and his chief minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert championed domestic manufacturing to establish French goods as the most desirable and costly in the world.5This battle for the dominance of French-made goods is the focus of Claire Goldstein, Vaux and Versailles: The Appropriations, Erasures, and Accidents that Made Modern France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
The sitter’s features conform to the voluptuous beauty ideals of the period, favoring wide, heavily lidded blue eyes, fair skin with a rosy blush, and rosebud lips.6On these ideals, see Christine Adams, “Performing for the Court and Public: Female Beauty Systems from the Old Regime through the French Revolution,” in Female Beauty Systems: Beauty as Social Capital in Western Europe and the United States, Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Christine Adams and Tracy Adams (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 155–86. Petitot’s pioneering naturalism in skin tones, achieved through the creation of new shades of vitreous enamel with the assistance of chemist Theodore Turquet de Mayerne (1573–1655),7Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodore de Mayerne (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 344. Per Trevor-Roper, “Petitot, using Mayerne’s pigments as colouring and Van Dyck’s portraits as models, went on to become the greatest portrait enamellist of his time.” is achieved through stippling: Producing a gradation of light and shade by drawing or painting small points, larger dots, or longer strokes. and subtle shading in creams and pinks in the sitter’s glowing cheeks and her flushed expanse of flesh, from her shoulders to her bust.
The lavish gold and enamel case, dating to the nineteenth century, adds to the opulence of the piece, reflecting renewed interest in French history and in Petitot’s work during that period.8Many of Petitot’s enamel miniatures came to the newly opened Musée du Louvre, Paris (1793), then called the Musée Central des Arts, after the seizure of the collection of Louis XVI in 1791. They were exhibited publicly, to great acclaim, in the museum’s Galerie d’Apollon from 1797 to 1802. Notices des dessins originaux, cartons, gouaches, pastels, émaux et miniatures du Musée Central des Arts (Paris: Musée Central des Arts, 1798–99), 99–103. Such exhibitions reignited interest in Petitot’s work and led to the production of copies to meet demand. Even without the historical notoriety of a well-known sitter and an original, richly worked case, this miniature paints a compelling picture of the glamour and luxury that characterized the court of the Sun King: Louis XIV named himself the Sun King, or le Roi Soleil, at the beginning of his reign in 1643. The choice of the sun, emblem of the god Apollo, as his personal symbol broadcast his desire to be celebrated as a supporter of the arts and a propagator of peace after the conclusion of a destructive civil war, the Fronde. Above all, it proclaimed the king the source of all life and established his eternal control over nature, through his daily rising and setting., Louis XIV.
Notes
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On the life of Louise de la Vallière, see Antonia Fraser, Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (New York: Anchor, 2007), 71–148, 280; and Jean-Christian Petitfils, Louise de la Vallière (Paris: Perrin, 2011).
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”Petitot, Jean,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T066745; Lada Nikolenko, Pierre Mignard: The Portrait Painter of the Grand Siècle (Munich: Nitz, 1983).
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We are grateful to Bernd Pappe for his assistance in searching for possible references for this miniature. Bernd Pappe, July 23–25, notes in NAMA curatorial files.
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Bernd Pappe has confirmed that this miniature was indeed painted by Petitot. Bernd Pappe, July 23–25, notes in NAMA curatorial files.
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This battle for the dominance of French-made goods is the focus of Claire Goldstein, Vaux and Versailles: The Appropriations, Erasures, and Accidents that Made Modern France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
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On these ideals, see Christine Adams, “Performing for the Court and Public: Female Beauty Systems from the Old Regime through the French Revolution,” in Female Beauty Systems: Beauty as Social Capital in Western Europe and the United States, Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Christine Adams and Tracy Adams (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 155–86.
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Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodore de Mayerne (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 344. Per Trevor-Roper, “Petitot, using Mayerne’s pigments as colouring and Van Dyck’s portraits as models, went on to become the greatest portrait enamellist of his time.”
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Many of Petitot’s enamel miniatures came to the newly opened Musée du Louvre, Paris (1793), then called the Musée Central des Arts, after the seizure of the collection of Louis XVI in 1791. They were exhibited publicly, to great acclaim, in the museum’s Galerie d’Apollon from 1797 to 1802. Notices des dessins originaux, cartons, gouaches, pastels, émaux et miniatures du Musée Central des Arts (Paris: Musée Central des Arts, 1798–99), 99–103. Such exhibitions reignited interest in Petitot’s work and led to the production of copies to meet demand.
Provenance
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.
Exhibitions
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 21, as Duchess de la Valliere.
References
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, erroneously as Duchess de la Valliere.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 21, p. 14, (repro.), erroneously as Duchess de la Valliere.
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