The sitter, a brilliant political figure who served under every French ruler from Louis XVI to Louis-Philippe, commissioned this portrait from Prud'hon in 1817. The artist had already painted two full-length portraits of Talleyrand for Napoleon for the Château de Compiègne: one in 1806 (Château de Valençay) and another in 1807 (Musée Carnavalet, Paris). The pose here was b...
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