Portret van Nicolas Boileau Despreaux 1769

This is Pierre Savart's portrait of Nicolas Boileau Despreaux, made with etching in eighteenth-century France. Boileau was a towering figure in the French literary establishment, and here Savart gives us a sense of his standing. Portraits of writers were increasingly popular at this time, as printmaking made images more widely available to the literate public. This image aims to capture both Boileau the man, with his flowing wig and elegant garb, and Boileau the artist, with the lyre, laurel wreath and theatrical masks that surround his name. The fine detail of the etching would have allowed for a relatively large edition size, and it would have circulated among members of the French academy and literary enthusiasts. To understand this image better, you might want to explore the archives of the Académie Française and consider Boileau's critical writings. Doing so will help you to appreciate this portrait as a marker of social status and a reflection of the French literary world.