What you Learn from Archives: Part II

A fine picture this, A Boy in Fancy Dress by early eighteenth century painter Nicolas de Largillière. The painting was purchased at auction by the agents of J. Paul Getty in the early 1970s and currently is on display at the Getty Museum. But, what exactly are we looking at? Who is this character all kitted out in his fancy Roman garb? And what kinds of questions are we to ask of a picture like this?

Opening the object files at the Museum provides some interesting clues. In 1982, the painting was lent to an exhibition at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for an exhibition. “I understand that you have heard about all of the problems we had with the local public reaction to the exhibition," so the head curator in Montreal wrote to the Getty. "It was an extremely difficult time for me.” What had happened? Had M. Largillière himself arisen from the grave an criticized the hanging of the pictures?

Apparently - - and presumably among other things - - this curator in Montreal had gotten into a disagreement the identity of the sitter in Largillière’s painting with the then-director of the Louvre, Pierre Rosenberg (who seems to be posing as a pope in the photo above). While the Montreal curator claimed that the sitter depicted was a youthful Louis XV, Rosenberg said it was the “Old Pretender,” James-Francis Edward Stuart. This disagreement had to do, centrally, with iconography. As the Montreal curator explained: “For Rosenberg, the absence of the fleur de lis or the ordre de St. Espirit, as well as the symbol of the goldfinch as reference to exile, would support the view that the little boy would represent James Francis Edward Stuart. (He tried to return to England in 1706, 1708, and 1715). I myself believe that the absence of the ordre de St. Espirit as well as the fleur de lis could be explained if the portrait were painted before the death of Louis XIV in 1715, i.e. before the future Louis XV was officially recognized as the heir to the throne.”

With this cloud over the identity of the sitter, the Getty folks then wrote to Aileen Ribeiro at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, asking her to sort the issue out. Calling attention to “the emblematic goldfinch perched on a thornbush”, the Getty folks parsed the key issue this way: “[The Montreal curator] sees it as a reference to the tragic deaths of Louis XV’s parents and brothers by the time he was two years old, and also a reference to the hope for his own survival and prosperity. Pierre Rosenberg, however, recognizes it as a reference to exile.” They ask Ribeiro, a now-retired expert in the history of costume, to narrow down the date of the painting’s production based on “the type of fancy costume the child wears and his hair style.”

Ribeiro’s response was strongly deflationary: "It is virtually impossible on the basis of the costume to assign an exact date to this; on the basis of the hairstyle a date in the 18th century would be more likely (it could be even into the 1720’s), but very often the simple hair worn by children anticipates that of adults later. The costume is probably a theatrical or masquerade costume, Roman dress; from the details (such as the wrinkled hose, in imitation of bare legs) I think this is a real costume, and not merely an artistic convention. ... One or two other points; although the features of the boy are not unlike those of the adult James Francis Edward Stuart, surely his hair was brown, as he was quite swarthy? I agree that it is unlikely that in any event Louis XV would have been portrayed without the St. Espirit."

And here is the dagger: “What I am saying is that I think it is a portrait of an aristocratic boy in fancy dress, and if pushed I would give a date in the first decade of the 18th century, but it could as easily be the 1690s’s or as late as the 1720’s.” Thus, neither the evidence of painting style, iconography, nor costume provided sufficient data by which to establish exactly the picture was executed and, more importantly, who it depicted.

The folks at the Getty clearly took Ribeiro's assessment seriously. Immediately after it was received, they began dispatching letters to other experts -- including Rosenberg -- soliciting identifications. And, as the Getty curator's letter to Rosenberg indicates, Ribeiro's interpretation had been followed hook, line and sinker. While it had been postulated that "the boy represents the duc de Bretagne," so the Getty reported to Robenberg, "I am also skeptical, however, about the identification of our boy as James Francis Edward Stuart, whose complexion and hair were darker. A date in the early 1690s also seems too early for our painting on the basis of style."

While Rosenberg then responded with incredible grace demuring that he is "nothing like" an expert on Largillière, the identity of the sitter henceforth remained unspecified. So, as the authorship of Largillière never seems to have been contested in this case, the key issue for assigning scholarly (and monetary) value lay in the identification of the sitter. If this was the dispute, upon what did our confederation of scholars agree?

The first shared presumption was that the picture did depict someone—Largillière, a well-known portrait painter, was not simply doing this painting as an imaginative caprice. Further, all interpreters assumed that the features in the picture might possess telling iconographical or symbolic significance; by knowing what the goldfinch signified, the identity of the sitter and conditions of image-production could be revealed. Finally, and somewhat in contradiction to the former point, it was assumed that the depicted hairstyle and clothing might well reflect then-current fashion trends; so, if the fashion depicted could be dated, then the date of the painting's production could safely be inferred.

Needless to say, nothing is mentioned in this correspondence of the nature of the dog, the character of his relationships to the boy and to the bird, or indeed why it would have been desirable for any of the nobility named above to have posed for such a weird picture. Curiouser and curioser, sir! Curiouser and curioser indeed.