Louis Hesselin
1660
Medium
Engraving; second state of two (Petitjean & Wickert)
Dimensions
Sheet: 12 3/8 × 9 9/16 in. (31.5 × 24.3 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Mr. Lev Tsitrin, 2001
Accession Number
2001.647.27
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the refined world of 17th French portraiture with Robert Nanteuil's * Hesselin* (1660), a masterful engraving housed in the Metropolitan Museum of's Drawings and Prints department. Nanteuil, one of the era's premier engravers, captures the sitter—a prominent financier and superintendent of King Louis XIV's buildings—in a dignified pose, complete with his coat of arms. Created during the opulent reign of the Sun King, this portrait reflects the grandeur of the French Baroque, where nobility was immortalized through meticulous detail to convey status and intellect. This second state o...
About the Artist
Robert Nanteuil · 1623–1678
Robert Nanteuil (1623-1678) was a French portrait engraver, draughtsman, and pastellist who became the preeminent portraitist to the court of Louis XIV. His technical mastery and royal patronage fundamentally transformed the status of engraving in France, elevating it from a mechanical craft to a recognized fine art. Nanteuil stands as the outstanding French portrait engraver of the seventeenth c...