Philippe de Champagne (1602 – 1674), Seguace di - Ritratto del Cardinale Richelieu

Follower of Philippe de Champagne (1602 – 1674)
Portrait of Cardinal Richelieu
Oil on canvas, 60 x 46 cm
With frame, 84 x 60 cm

The oil on canvas in question offers a portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, taken in half-length, slightly three-quarter view and with the typical cardinal's clothes. Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu (Paris, 1585 – Paris, 1642) , was destined for a military career but instead undertook an ecclesiastical one (abandoned by one of his brothers) and already at the age of twenty-one he became bishop of Luçon appointed by King Henry IV and also obtain the same investiture from Pope Paul V a few months later, on 17 April 1607. In 1614 he was appointed grand master of ceremonies at the court of Queen Anne of Austria by the regent Maria de' Medici, which allowed him to enter the king's council of France and assume the role of Secretary of State for the Interior and War. in 1621, acquiring fame as a very skilled negotiator, he received the nomination as cardinal: the nomination was officially ratified in Lyon on 12 December 1622[13] , but Armand never went to Rome to collect the biretta and the title. He was appointed prime minister by King Louis XIII of France. As a great politician, he was very skilled in strengthening the French monarchy in an absolutist direction, a monarchy which, thanks to his action, was more powerful than that of the previous sovereign, Henry IV of Bourbon, with his closest collaborator, the Duke of Sully. Richelieu, in fact, drastically reduced the power of the nobility, favoring the development of the bourgeoisie. Among Richelieu's intentions at the helm of the state were the strengthening of the king's power and the desire to make France the greatest power in Europe. To achieve the first objective, Richelieu clashed with both the nobles and the Protestants, namely the French Calvinists called Huguenots. The nobles, in fact, wanted to increase their power: against them Richelieu used force, when necessary. To make France the leading European power, Richelieu, following his raison d'État, decided to have the French army intervene in the Thirty Years' War against Spain and Austria, achieving numerous successes. It also accelerated colonial expansion, pushing France to continue the occupation of southern Canada, various islands in the Antilles (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint-Dominque) , Guyana and Senegal. During his direction a strong military navy was also born and, from the point of view of culture, we must remember the foundation of the French Academy of Sciences in 1635, the creation of a precious library in his palace on Place Royale in Paris (later absorbed by French National Library) and rich art collections, which were subsequently dispersed among various owners and partly lost. In 1631, at the height of his political career, he also managed to obtain authorization from the king to build a castle and a village with his name (still called Richelieu) , still considered today as a masterpiece of 17th century European urban planning. . In 1635 he was appointed commendatory abbot of the Abbey of Cluny and the Abbey of Cîteaux, positions he held until his death in 1642 from pulmonary tuberculosis. Not much loved by his people, he also managed to recommend to the king the choice of Cardinal Giulio Mazzarino as his successor.
The Cardinal was portrayed numerous times by the painter Philippe de Champagne (1602-1674) , a pupil of the painters Jean Bouillon and Michel de Bordeaux (from 1621) , and trained together with Jacques Fouquières and Nicolas Poussin, to whom he always remained linked by deep friendship.
Already in the first years of his career he abandoned both the first baroque tendencies, the result of his early artistic education, and the influences of Rubens, to orient himself towards a more measured style, color and figurative structure. In 1628 he entered the service of the Queen Mother Marie de' Medici, who entrusted him with the pictorial decoration of the Luxembourg Palace: at court he had the opportunity to have his work appreciated by Cardinal Richelieu, of whom he became the favorite artist and who entrusted him with decorations in his private residence and in the headquarters of the Sorbonne, and to Louis XIII, for whom he painted several paintings; he also created six canvases for the Carmelites of Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Paris.
In these works, Champagne developed his proverbial rigorous simplification, characterized by an orderly naturalism, a hieratic fixity of the characters and an almost frontal perspective of the faces. The work in question takes up one of the types of portrait that Philippe de Champagne studied for the Cardinal.

The frame is provided free of charge, therefore it cannot be a reason for return or complaint.

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