Stéphane Perreau's well documented, excellent blog on Louis XIV' court painter Hyacinthe Rigaud recently featured his magnificent 1723 portrait of Cardinal Guillaume Dubois (1656-1723; see also elsewhere on this blog). The painting (frequently used in my conference presentations) is a gift from heaven for historians of public international law, as it displays the cardinal, main artisan of France's post-Ludovican foreign policy, in front of four books, two to three of which are closely associated to the legal domain. I know no better expression of the symbolic and cultural importance of law as a means of distinction in the Ancien Régime political society.
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