1873, Jean-Léon Gérôme, L'Eminence Grise -- National Gallery of Art (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the museum/exhibition label:
Salon 1874, no. 798
Gérôme won a medal at the 1874 Salon for this painting of 17th-century court life under Louis XIII. The friar François Leclerc du Tremblay descends the grand steps of the royal palace absorbed by a book, oblivious to the king's entourage. Wearing garish costumes, the courtiers bow to the friar in his simple brown robe. Du Tremblay was considered the éminence grise—a term for a behind-the-scenes power broker—of Cardinal Richelieu, who held outsized power in France due to the kings young age. Gérôme may have been making a veiled critique of the Catholic Church's covert political power in the early 1870s.
1873, Jean-Léon Gérôme, L'Eminence Grise -- National Gallery of Art (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the museum/exhibition label:
Salon 1874, no. 798
Gérôme won a medal at the 1874 Salon for this painting of 17th-century court life under Louis XIII. The friar François Leclerc du Tremblay descends the grand steps of the royal palace absorbed by a book, oblivious to the king's entourage. Wearing garish costumes, the courtiers bow to the friar in his simple brown robe. Du Tremblay was considered the éminence grise—a term for a behind-the-scenes power broker—of Cardinal Richelieu, who held outsized power in France due to the kings young age. Gérôme may have been making a veiled critique of the Catholic Church's covert political power in the early 1870s.