Jules Hardouin-Mansart

When Rigaud painted this in 1685, the dome behind the sitter was still a building site. Jules Hardouin-Mansart had designed the domed church of the Invalides, the hospital Louis XIV built in Paris for old and wounded soldiers, and it would not be finished until 1706. Rigaud puts it in the background anyway, as the work this man wished to be known by.

Mansart had been the king's First Architect since 1681 and was ennobled the following year. The ribbon across his chest is that of the Order of Saint-Lazare, which made him a knight in February 1682. His hand rests on a book, a sign that an architect's work is a matter of the mind. Rigaud, then in his mid-20s, painted him again in 1702, but that second portrait is lost and known only from an engraving by Gérard Edelinck. This one belonged to the Count d'Angiviller, director of the royal buildings under Louis XVI, who gave it to the Royal Academy in 1779.