Massé, who gained a reputation initially as a miniaturist, received a formal academic training, first as a pupil of Jean Baptiste Jouvenet and then in the Académie royale where he was enrolled as an engraver since miniature painters were not considered eligible. Bénézit (1) records that his contemporaries considered Massé to be of an honourable and energetic character with gentle and agreeable manners. Miniatures of mythological scenes as well as chalk portraits are recorded in the 19th and 20th century auction records but Massé’s contemporary reputation was based upon his numerous portraits of Court figures and particularly on the depictions of Louis XV and his wife, Maria Leszczynska, which were painted on snuffboxes and handed out as gifts to foreign courtiers. In 1723, Massé’s skills as an engraver were honoured by the award of the contract to make drawings and publish engravings of the entire decoration of the Le Brun’s great ceiling in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. This colossal enterprise was to be undertaken at Massé’s own expense but the profit from the publication of the engravings would be his. The enormity of the project was evident; Le Brun himself had wanted to oversee such a work but the cost of the operation soon led him to abandon the idea. Massé’s drawings of the gallery, made with the help of assistants and possibly other professional artists, took nearly eight years to complete and the realisation of the engravings themselves, took another twenty. Fifty-four highly finished and absolutely precise drawings were completed of which fifty-two are now in the Louvre, Massé having sold the drawings to the King in 1750 in order to raise sufficient funds for the publication of the engravings. As a director of this project, Massé was clearly a perfectionist; his exigence drove away many of the engravers initially employed to copy the drawings while his desire for perfection led him to draw on the services of such figures as Lemoyne, Boucher and Cochin to retouch particularly important proofs.
Massé’s presence at Versailles clearly allowed him to remain familiar with the political figures of the court throughout this long period of work. The present drawing is evidence of this proximity and the exquisite degree of finish with which it was made is perhaps indicative of the value of a friendship which Massé recorded in the affectionate inscription placed, with a miniaturist’s skill, in the text of the documents placed at the edge of the desk. The sitter is sympathetically portrayed and his informal dress and the piles of books before him suggest he was a hard-working member of the ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Louvre has a technically very similar portrait amongst its collection of Massé’s drawings (2). Of comparable dimensions the Louvre drawing shows the same fine and extremely skilful application of red chalk, a technique by which texture, volume and expression are conveyed in such a way as to emulate the soft richness of an engraving.
Notes
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E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs .. , Librairie Grund, 1952, p.827.
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Inventory number 12761. This portrait though unidentified is recorded as having been given by the artist to the royal collection. The sitter appears to hold an engraver’s tool and therefore, perhaps, this is a self portrait.
