French School, 17th century

Anonymous sale, Paris, Kahn & Associes, 5 December 2019, lot 22 (as 17th Century Follower of Claude Deruet);

Where acquired by the present collector.

This elegant portrait of a French noblewoman, possibly Marie de Rohan-Montbazon (1600-1679), was probably painted by an artist working in the court of Louis XIII. The rich fabrics of her costume, embroidered with gold thread and intricate lace details, assert the sitter's courtly status while her luminous pearl accessories emphasize the porcelain lustre of her skin. While the artist remains as-yet unknown, the present portrait may be associated with Claude Deruet (1588-1660) or Jean Leblond (circa 1590-1666), both accomplished French court painters working in the early- to mid-seventeenth century. A nearly identical portrait that appears to depict the same sitter with slight variations to her costume has been attributed to Leblond based its similarities with one of his engravings, a version of which is in the British Museum.¹ The stylistic nuances also evoke the works of Deruet, for example, the Portrait of a woman in a hat in the National Museum, Krakow.²

The sitter in the present portrait has sometimes been identified as Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, considered to be one of the most influential and intriguing women of her day. A close friend of Queen Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII, Rohan-Montbazon wielded considerable social and political power at court. Her formidable rivalry with Cardinal Richelieu, prime minister to the King, eventually resulted in her exile from France due to her role in the Conspiration des Dames, a conspiracy among Queen Anne, the Princesse de Condé, and Rohan-Montbazon to thwart the Cardinal's marriage arrangements for the King's brother, Gaston, who at that time was the sole heir to the crown. Described by Louis Auchincloss: [Rohan-Montbazon] has assumed the role of charmer in the nineteenth-century fiction where Richelieu plays the villain. Both in fiction and fact she was the very essence of what he was trying to tame in the French nobility. She was everything that Richelieu was not: beautiful, healthy, imaginative, sympathetic, romantic, witty. She cared nothing for crowns or laws but much for individuals and power. She was a brigand with a brigand's code of honor. Yet Richelieu was fascinated by her.³

¹ Jean Leblond, Portrait présumé de Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de Luynes puis de Chevreuse, oil on panel. Private collection, sold Paris, Christie's, 26 June 2008, lot 23; Jean Leblond, Portrait of Marie de Rohan, the wife of Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Chevreuse, engraving. London, British Museum, inv. no. 1917,1208.3772.

² Claude Deruet, Portrait of a woman in a hat, oil on panel. Krakow, National Museum, inv. no. MNK XII-302.

³ L. Auchincloss, Richelieu, New York 1972, p. 75.