Portrait Of Jacques Ducrocq, Controller Of The Household Of The Duc Of Orléans - 1689

This beautiful golden terracotta welcomes at its center a portrait of an aristocrat whose habit evokes those of the time of Louis XIV. It is surmounted by a canopy in which the artist has inscribe the identity of his subject and the date of completion of the work, 1689. Jacques Ducrocq, was an eminent character at the court of France, the controller of the household of the Duke of Orleans, then regent of the kingdom. Great amateur of art, the inventory of its property carried out on the occasion of its union in 1716 with Marguerite-Florimonde Vary, the widow of the painter Antoine Dupré, shows his possession -among others- of some paintings of the Titian, of Francken or of the Corrège. His death comes in October 1719, a date that seems perfectly to come into consistency with the appearance he has on our portrait executed two decades earlier, in 1689. The typology and format of our terracotta let us think that it was probably used as a model, submitted for appreciation to a jury or a sponsor on the occasion of a large-scale realization.