Portrait of the Sculptor Nicolas Le Brun

Nicolas Le Brun, the painter’s father, is depicted as an elegantly dressed gentleman with a red scarf wound decoratively around his left shoulder. He is turned to the beholder and pointing at a statuette - possibly a plaster cast of one of his sculptures entitled Antinous of Belvedere. Antinous, who drowned in the Nile during one of Hadrian’s journeys to Egypt, was a favourite of the Roman emperor and was deified after his death. The Antinous motif was highly popular with both sculptors and painters in 17th-century France.

The painting was originally attributed to the painter Jacques Blanchard as a likeness of the sculptor Fran�ois Duquesnoy.