Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville (1711–1772), French violinist and composer

Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville was one of the leading French musicians of the mid-eighteenth century — a violinist, composer, and superintendent of the royal chapel whose operas and sacred works shaped the Parisian musical scene during the Querelle des Bouffons. La Tour's pastel of Mondonville belongs to a group of portraits the artist made of French musical and theatrical celebrities, paralleling his practice of portraying literary and philosophical figures. The Musée Antoine-Lécuyer holds this work as part of its comprehensive La Tour collection. Music and theatre were central to Rococo cultural life, and a portrait by La Tour conferred the same cultural prestige on a musician as it did on a philosophe or a court figure.

Pastel on paper, with La Tour's characteristic analytical handling applied to a musical sitter. The face receives the full intensity of his observation, while dress and accessories signal the sitter's professional and social status. La Tour's dense, layered pastel surface is fully realised in this image of a celebrated performer.