Mr. and Mrs. Antoine Mongez

In 1812 Antoine Mongez was in charge of medals at the Paris Mint, turning the Empire's campaigns into struck bronze in the year the Grande Armée marched into Russia. He was a numismatist and a scholar of antiquity, and he was David's friend, which is really why this small wooden panel exists. David wrote his reason across the middle of it in Latin: to his friends Antoine Mongez and Angélique his wife, from their friend Louis David, in the year 1812. Angélique, 28 years younger than her husband, had trained in David's studio and was one of the very few women then showing large history paintings at the Salon. She kept the portrait for 43 years and left it to the Louvre when she died in 1855.