Ritratto di François Buron

This is about as early as Jacques-Louis David gets. He painted it in 1769, when he was 20 or 21 and still a student in Paris, years before the trip to Rome that would harden his style into the severe Neoclassicism of his famous history paintings. The sitter is his uncle, François Buron. Buron wanted the young man to train as an architect, the safe and respectable path, while it was Buron's wife who backed David's wish to paint. David portrayed them both, as a pair. The handling here is soft and warm, still close to the Rococo taste he grew up with, with none of the cold marble light to come. The portrait stayed in the family until the early 1900s and now belongs to a private collection.