Portret van de chirurg Pierre-Joseph Desault

Joseph Bordes produced this print of the surgeon Pierre-Joseph Desault. The artwork is based on a drawing by another artist, N. Coquin. The image is striking for its demonstration of class. Desault's slightly powdered hair, frilled shirt, and severe buttoned jacket speaks to the formal conventions of the French upper middle class. Desault was head surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, one of the most important hospitals in France. His elevated social position would have come from his institutional role in the royal hospital system. This print was likely made as a study or for reproduction in a book, one of many images that helped to celebrate and cement the rising professional classes that emerged in late eighteenth-century France. The image helps us to think about the relationship between art, class, and institutional power. To understand more, look to the history of medicine in France, the system of royal hospitals and professional education that allowed Desault to rise to social prominence.