Portrait of flutist François Devienne

This portrait has long carried the name of Jacques-Louis David, the leading painter of Revolutionary France, who in 1792 was deep in politics and about to vote for the king's execution. Scholars are no longer sure the picture is his. Some now propose another hand, the painter Jean-Baptiste Robin, and even the identity of the sitter is only presumed. He is thought to be Francois Devienne, a flute virtuoso and composer whose method book trained a generation of French players, shown here with an arm resting near his instrument. The attribution may yet change again, and so may the name of the man. If it is Devienne, he was then at the height of his Paris fame, playing and teaching, about a decade before he died in the asylum at Charenton.