A portrait of Christiaan Huygens?
in
Etablissement de l'Académie des Sciences et fondation de l'observatoire.1666
While looking for information on Christiaan Huygens on the internet early nov 2003, I
stumbled upon a painting which represents the presentation of the Académie
des Sciences to Louis XIV by Colbert. I thought it reasonable to assume
that Huygens' portrait would be present in the picture, as he was one of the
founding members as well as the one with the highest salary (untill the
arrival of Cassini). From the RMN and the Joconda internet databases I obtained some
better quality images.
The list of the persons on the painting, as mentioned in both databases was limited
to (obviously) Louis XIV (seated), Jean-Baptiste Colbert (standing in
black, left of Louis XIV), Jean Dominique Cassini (in the middle of the
left part, right under the armillary sphere), abbé Edme Mariotte, abbé Jean
Picard, Pierre de Carcavy, Marin Cureau de La Chambre and Jean-Baptiste
Duhamel (location?). Also, to my surprise and almost surely erroneously,
the name of Constantijn Huygens was mentioned. But Christiaan was not
mentioned at allK.
I then contacted the Musée National du Château et des Trianons in
Versailles in dec 2003. After a few days I received a response: there was a list of
names of the persons in the picture, but there was no sure identification
of the names with the persons, (apart from the obvious ones). It still had
to be researched. A subsequent request from my side for a copy that list of
names was left unanswered.
The Gallica website of the BNF provided me with the texts of the memoires
from the early day's of the Académie des Sciences, a list of the founding
members and the text of a diary of Ch Perrault.
On April 14, 2004 I was given the opportunity to deliver a short
presentation about the portrait during the Huygens conference in
Noordwijk. Afterwards I contacted the Versailles museum again and
suggested to see someone of the staff during my stay in Paris in July. So
on Tuesday 27 of July, I was cordially received by Mme Dubois, given
access to the dossier on the painting and had my first encounter with the painting.
Started: feb 28, 2004
Last Update: dec 18, 2004