Triplo ritratto del cardinale di Richelieu

This is a working document, not a grand state portrait. Around 1642 Cardinal Richelieu, the man who effectively ran France for Louis XIII, needed a marble bust carved by a sculptor in Rome who would never see him in person. So Champaigne painted his head three times on one canvas, full face and both profiles, so the carver could work in the round from Paris. Above the right-hand profile someone wrote that this was the better likeness. Richelieu died at the end of that same year. The bust that Bernini made partly from images like this one was later blamed for looking little like the cardinal, and the painted profiles took the blame.