Portret van Nicolas De Lorgue

About this artwork

Prent uit: Vertot, René Aubert de. Histoire des Chevaliers hospitaliers de St Jean de Jérusalem. Parijs: Rollin, Quillau, Desaint, 1726. Illustratie op p. 413 van deel 1. Cars vervaardigde portretten van 65 grootmeesters van de Maltezer Orde.

Art Historical Context

This engraving by Laurent Cars, created in 1726, captures the likeness of Nicolas De Lorgue, a Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, also known as the Order of Malta. It forms part of René Aubert de Vertot’s multi-volume *Histoire des Chevaliers hospitaliers de St Jean de Jérusalem*, published in Paris that same year. The print appears on page 413 of the first volume and belongs to an ambitious series in which Cars produced portraits of sixty-five successive Grand Masters, bringing visual continuity to the order’s long and storied past. As an engraving, the work exemplifies the refined reproductive techniques of early eighteenth-century France. Fine lines and subtle tonal gradations allowed the image to be printed alongside text, making the likenesses of these military-religious leaders widely accessible to readers. Cars’s measured approach balances formal dignity with historical specificity, presenting De Lorgue in the distinctive robes and insignia of his office. Today the print offers modern viewers a window into both the chivalric ideals of the Maltese Order and the Enlightenment-era fascination with documenting institutional memory through art. Its modest dimensions—213 by 150 millimeters—belie the breadth of the project, which helped shape how eighteenth-century audiences visualized centuries of crusading history.

About the Artist

Laurent Cars · 1699–1771

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