Cristoph Wilibald von Gluck at the Spinet

portrait

During the reign of Louis XVI Duplessis was a portraitist in Paris. The most popular of his numerous portraits is that representing the great composer Gluck. It was painted during the Gluck's stay in Paris on the occasion of the first performances of his operas Iphigeneia in Aulis and Armida.

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Cristoph Wilibald von Gluck at the Spinet

About the Artist

Joseph-Siffred Duplessis

1725 – 1802

Duplessis was a French painter who studied with Subleyras in Rome 1745-49. Returning to France he pursued a career as portraitist in Paris, while retaining close links to his home town of Carpentras. After 1774 Duplessis won favour at the court of the new king, Louis XVI, and painted portraits of the entire royal family, as well as of Gluck (1775, Vienna) and Benjamin Franklin (1779). While in Paris, he dispatched altar paintings to the cathedral of Carpentras, as well as decorative landscape paintings to the local hospital. He retired to Carpentras from 1792 to 1796.

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