3-035-604 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Presumed Portrait of the Duc de Choiseul and Two Companions, about 1775. Additional Info: The Duc de Choiseul, seen on the left, lived large. Through industry and intrigue, he rose to become the most powerful person in France after King Louis XV, amassing a great fortune and spending it extravagantly on, among other things, an outstanding collection of paintings. Here, the dedicated womanizer Choiseul is shown in exile with his mistress Madame de Brionne and the Abbé Barthélemy, the learned curator of the king's collection of antiquities and a close friend and adviser of the duke and his duchess.