Rigaud’s best known picture at the Louvre is the stately _portrait d’apparat_ of _King Louis XIV._ (No. 781), a life-size full length, in which the spirit of the time, the curious blending of supercilious haughtiness, love of display, and affected grace of manner, are happily expressed in the monarch’s attitude and in the whole setting. The picture is signed and dated, “PEINT PAR HYACINTHE RIGAUD, 1701.” The same tendencies are to be noted in the full length _Portrait of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux_ (No. 783), in which it is surprising that the prelate’s personality is not completely smothered by the splendid profusion of the accessories. His gifts appear, however, in a better light in his excellent _Portraits of Marie Serre, the Artist’s Mother_ (No. 784), with the same head, honestly and soberly painted, twice on the same canvas, once in sharp profile looking to the right, and again, facing this, a three-quarter profile to the left. Wholly unexpected is the delicacy and softness of one of his pictures in the La Caze Room: the _Portrait of the Duke of Lesdiguières as a Child_ (No. 792). His solitary excursion into the domain of “grand art” at the Louvre is at the same time his last work: _The Presentation in the Temple_ (No. 780), which in grouping and lighting owes much to the study of Rembrandt. Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) was born in Paris, but was taken when still an infant to Antwerp, where he became a pupil of Goebouw. From 1674 to 1680 he worked in London as an assistant of Sir Peter Lely, from whom he acquired the clever tricks and mannerisms in the painting of draperies and the textures of silks and velvets and other materials, which were to form so important a part of his artistic equipment. After Lely’s death Largillière went to Paris, where he not only shared with Rigaud the patronage of the Court as portrait painter, but secured many important commissions for historical paintings which, perhaps to the advantage of his fame, are now all but forgotten. Largillière was not without distinction as a brilliant and daring colourist. Nor was he incapable, on occasion, of seizing the subtleties of his sitters’ character. But his praiseworthy qualities are more than balanced by his unpleasant affectations and by the baroque squirminess of his line. This tendency carried him to such insufferable excesses as the conglomeration of lumpy bosses which does duty for a hand in his _Portrait of M. Du Vaucel_ (No. 484), in the La Caze Room.