“Portrait of the Most Beautiful” study of a portrait of Madame Du Barry by Chevalier Dagoty

This well-known portrait of Countess Du Barry with her servant Zamor is often misunderstood. Let us first note that this is not a painting, but a color print, a true technical feat in this field. It is not an interpretive engraving based on a portrait by François Hubert Drouais, but a creative work. It is not only a genre scene representing a lady of quality at her toilet, being served a cup of coffee by her servant, but a work of circumstance to ensure the favor of the royal mistress. Known under the sycophantic title of “Portrait of the Most Beautiful” given by the artist, the work was titled “Madame Du Barry and her negro Zamor” in the 19th century, then, today, “Madame Du Barry to whom Zamor presents a cup of coffee.” As for its author, Gautier-Dagoty, he was anything but a knight, if not in the industry, and owes it only to his careerism to have become a "painter to the king" and then to Marie-Antoinette...

By Élisabeth Maisonnier, chief curator of heritage at the Palace of Versailles

Jean-Baptiste-André Gautier-Dagoty (1738? -1786) is the son of the engraver Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty (1711-1785), who developed in France the complex three-color printing process developed by Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1710-1771) in England in the first half of the 18th century and appropriated it to the point of obtaining an undue royal privilege. His sons practiced this process, with more or less success.

An ambitious engraver

Color engraving was the subject of much competing research in the 18th century. The Gautier-Dagotys use the technique of black engraving (mezzotinto), which consists of engraving the entire plate in dotted lines using a tool called a cradle, then, using a scraper, a scraper, and a burnisher, to smooth certain parts. When printed, the smoothed parts no longer retain the ink. The production of several engraved plates pressed successively on the paper with inks of different colors – blue, red, yellow, black, and the addition of white on certain versions – allows printing in color. The engravings differ depending on the color ink load and the rapid wear of the plate. The process is complex and time-consuming but allows for very pictorial effects, seductive play of lights, and a velvety finish, for which a certain softness is, however, criticized. Furthermore, it is not an interpretative engraving, like the traditional line engraving, with etching and burin, but a true imitation of painting, made of different values ​​and shades.

On several occasions, the father and his sons presented their prints to the king. Thus, on September 9, 1767, “Sir Gautier Dagoty presented the King with the first forty plates of his Collection of Plants printed in color” (Gazette de France). They even gave printing demonstrations: “On the 17th [November 1767], Mr. Gautier Dagoty, father and son, engraved and printed in color, in the presence of the king, the portrait of His Majesty. This operation was done in five turns of the press and six minutes, and the painting came out finished with all its colors. The king then decided to ask the author and his five sons, each of whom held a copper of various colors, several questions relating to their art. The engraving of this portrait is made after the painting was painted by the eldest son of Mr. Gautier Dagoty, who followed the composition of Mr. Michel Vanloo and finished the head after His Majesty himself in several sessions. This print will appear shortly. » The following year, “Sir Gautier Dagoty, the eldest son, has just painted, from life, the portrait of the king in bust, as well as those of Monsignor the Dauphin, of Monseigneur the Count of Provence and Monseigneur the Count of Artois. This artist, jointly with your father, is working to engrave, in color, these portraits” (Gazette de France, April 20, 1768). Louis

In 1770, Gautier-Dagoty still presented a mezzotint engraving, "the Duke of Choiseul presenting the portrait of Marie-Antoinette to the King", but it was as a painter that the "Knight of Agoty" wanted to be recognized. Presenting himself as “painter to the king” from 1772, after the death of Louis Without training, having obtained the favor of the queen without the support of those around him, he is hated and despised by Madame Campan who describes him in her Memoirs as a “miserable artist”.

“The representation of beauty”

It was at the moment when his work was beginning to gain recognition, when he chose to devote himself to painting without completely abandoning engraving, that Jean-Baptiste-André Gautier-Dagoty created this portrait. It was announced in the Mercure de France in April 1771: “Portrait of Madame la Comtesse du Barry, engraved in the style of painting. This portrait, engraved by Mr. Gautier d'Agoty fils, painter and engraver to the king, creates an illusion with the happy mixture of colors and offers a pleasant picture. It is a very great effort of the art of engraving to have taken the imitation of painting in the representation of beauty to this point. The composition of this painting is at the same time simple and ingenious. The price is £12. »

The signature under the engraving – “painted and engraved in colors by J.B.A Gautier Dagoty, eldest son, rue Montmartre” – leaves no doubt: Dagoty alone is the author of the painted portrait and the engraving. Drouais had produced numerous portraits of the young woman from 1769, some exhibited at the Salon: Dagoty was not inspired by these, but by the one for which he undoubtedly obtained a sitting. A painted portrait [fig.] which bears her signature is also kept at Potsdam Castle (2): the countess appears there in a slightly richer outfit (pearls in her hair, body of the blue dress decorated with a knot) but with a similar hairstyle, a transparent muslin negligee with identical loose ribbons, and above all a face with a similar inflection and expression.

Gautier-Dagoty's engraving is known from several copies (3). The versions are all different, due to the technique itself. When printed, some sheets did not receive one or the other color; others have more or less strong inking; the colors and even the details of the decoration of the objects (cup, tray, and boxes) differ.

The favorite

Unlike the often mythological portraits of Drouais, Gautier-Dagoty here shows an elegant young woman at her toilet, coiffed but simply dressed in an open muslin “dressing suit” with untied pink ribbons. Despite a certain clumsiness, the model is recognizable by her large almond-shaped eyes and her famous beauty spots.

The young Jeanne Bécu, mistress of Louis The favorite is represented here in a rich but neutral interior, furnished with a velvet and gilded wood armchair, a table on which a mirror is placed: nothing directly evokes her luxurious Versailles apartment. The few objects represented indicate the ease of a young woman who follows fashion: two boxes, perhaps in shagreen, or porcelain, on her dressing table; a small French lacquer tray imitated from China; a coffee cup, which, according to the engravings, appears to be made of vermeil or Sèvres porcelain. So many luxury objects that we acquire from Parisian merchants. As for coffee, an imported and refined drink, it is reserved for a wealthy elite.

A young black servant

Zamor, the young black servant who presents this cup of coffee, is another symbol of the rank and fortune that the Countess has attained. The presence of a black servant – the unacceptable term used in the 18th century was “nigger” or “negro” – is traditional in portraits of rich aristocrats or bourgeois, especially when the latter became rich through trade with the Indies. Madame de Pompadour had two black servants. For the new countess, it is one of the expressions of royal favor and her new status.

Born in 1762 in Bengal, probably bought as a slave by an English captain, freed in England or France, young Zamor arrived in Versailles through Marshal Richelieu in 1769. The king placed him in the service of his mistress. He was baptized Louis Benoît on July 4, 1772, in Versailles; her godmother is Madame Du Barry, her godfather the son of the Prince de Conti. Considered a servant, he nevertheless received a careful education from the countess: he learned to read, write, count, and perhaps play music. The favorite spent considerable sums on him: the archives bear witness to the luxury of her outfits, six complete sets for nearly 2,000 pounds in 1770 for example. In 1772, we provided "for Zemord (sic): a wholesale hussar's coat from Naples, bordered with silver braid. Style of a hat and feather. Tuft garnished with jasmine broths. Belt and small saber”. Gautier-Dagoty represents him in winter clothing, red velvet richly embroidered with gold, and wearing a turban also red and gold. In the only other representation of the young boy, Moreau's drawing depicting a party in Louveciennes, he wears a refined pink silk outfit, black ankle boots, and a white hat with a feather.

A note from Madame Campan in her Memoirs mentions him quickly: “Little Indian who wore the tail of Countess Du Barry’s dress. Louis XV often had fun with this little sapajou; having made the joke of appointing him governor of Luciennes, he was given 3,000 francs as an annual bonus. » The tradition making Zamor the “governor” of Louveciennes is not attested by any archives. Moreover, most of the anecdotes about her, repeated over and over again, appear in the Memoirs of Madame Du Barry, an apocryphal text published in 1829, inspired by the libels of the 1770s. It is from this fanciful text that the example of the derogatory terms “toy” or “doll” describes Zamor. But the legend is tenacious and also makes the “traitor Zamor” the cause of the death of the former royal mistress. No doubt familiar with the ideas of philosophers, in particular Rousseau, then won over to revolutionary ideas, he was nevertheless only a simple clerk on the surveillance committee of the district of Versailles. He only appears at the countess's trial as a witness in the accusations of diamond theft which lead her to the scaffold. Arrested a few weeks later as “very suspicious”, he was even imprisoned as Madame Du Barry’s agent. Zamor died in poverty in 1820, in a room where the works of Rousseau and portraits of Marat and Robespierre were located…

But, far from the legend or the novel (of which he was also a hero!), Zamor also plays a very concrete role in this portrait: it allows Gautier-Dagoty to demonstrate his ability to subtly treat the traits fine and especially the skin color, coppery and not black, of the young Bengali, an exercise in style always delicate for a painter. The presence of the “black model” also enhances by contrast the clear and radiant complexion of the young woman.

So many ways for Gautier-Dagoty to showcase his talents as a portrait painter, and to promote himself.

1• Chateau de Versailles, MV 8061.

2• GK I 6123. It would have entered the collections of Frederick II in 1779.

3• Two painted canvases were subsequently produced based on the engraving: a painting kept at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, perhaps from the end of the 18th century, and an enlarged oval version produced for Versailles in 1838 by Auguste de Creuse and disappeared since 1973.