Self-portrait

By 1716 the face Hyacinthe Rigaud had spent his life painting was gone. Louis XIV had died the previous September, after 72 years on the throne, and the portraitist who had given the reign its official image was in his late 50s. That year he turned the brush on himself and sent the result to Florence, where the Medici had for decades been gathering self-portraits by the painters they admired. He shows himself holding the tools of the trade, which is why the picture is known as the self-portrait with the palette. He wears a heavy wig and a loose gown rather than court dress, the working painter rather than the man who dressed kings in ermine. The canvas still carries his own note on the back, that it was made by Hyacinthe Rigaud in Paris in 1716.