Portret van de letterkundige Jean-Baptiste Gail 1821

Julien-Léopold Boilly made this print of Jean-Baptiste Gail sometime in the early nineteenth century. It’s an engraving, a medium that lends itself to the precise, almost scientific rendering of its subject. Gail was a classical scholar who made his name translating Greek texts and teaching at the Collège de France. The print commemorates his membership in the Légion d’honneur. It’s a formal portrait, but Boilly’s decision to depict Gail in three-quarter view, along with the softness of the engraved lines, gives it an informal, intimate feel. It presents us with an image of a new kind of meritocratic elite, a scholar who has risen to prominence through talent rather than birth. We can see the rise of a new set of institutions here; Gail isn’t some free-thinking bohemian, but an academic, a member of learned societies, a servant of the state. To understand this image fully, we need to delve into the archives of the French state, to trace the careers of men like Gail, and to understand the place of institutions like the Légion d’honneur in the social and cultural life of post-revolutionary France.