ile and adroit style. In 1686 the old favourite was
commanded by Louis to paint a rival picture to Mignard's, Christ
bearing His Cross, which was incensed with extravagant adulation by
the courtiers. Lebrun set to work and in three months completed his
Christ on the Cross, which the king loudly appreciated. Both pictures,
630 and 500, now hang on the L. wall a few paces from each other.
Pierre Mignard (1612-1695) was a fellow-pupil with Lebrun under Vouet,
and like him in early years a sojourner in Rome: his popular Madonnas,
modelled from his Italian wife, added a new word (_mignardes_) to the
French language. One such, 628, hangs a little further along this
wall. In 1657 he won royal favour by a portrait of the young Louis, a
branch of art in which he excelled. Mignard was a supple flatterer,
and Louis sat to him many times. Once, later in the monarch's life,
his royal sitter asked if he observed any change. "Sire," answered the
courtly painter, "I only perceive a few more victories on your brow."
A portrait of Madame de Maintenon, 639, is seen (L. wall) in this
room. Mignard's greatest work, however, great in range if not in art,
is the painting of the cupola of the church at the Val de Grace, which
is not only an indifferent painting, but was the occasion of a bad
poem by his friend Moliere.[217] Two other eminent portraitists,
Nicholas Largilliere (1656-1746), and Hyacinth Rigaud (1659-1743),
may now fitly be considered.

[Footnote 217: _La Gloire du Dome du Val de Grace._ The subject of the
picture is La Gloire des Bienheureux, and contains 200 figures.]

By Rigaud, who was regarded as the first painter of Europe for truth
of resemblance united with magnificence of presentment, are: a
masterly portrait of Bossuet, 783; and a superb rendering of the
_roi-soleil_, 781, both on the L. wall. Further along, on the same
wall, are 784, portrait of his mother in two aspects painted for the
sculptor Coysevox; and his last work, 780, Presentation at the Temple.
Rigaud was especially successful with the rich bourgeoisie of Paris,
and later became court painter, supreme in expressing the grandiose
and inflated pomposities of the age. He, says Reynolds, in the tumour
of his presumptuous loftiness, was the perfect example of Du Pile's
rules, that bid painters so to draw their portraits that they seem to
speak and say to us: "Stop, look at me! I am that invincible king:
majesty surrounds me. Look! I am that valiant soldier: I s