Louis XV and Madame Dubarry

Painted in 1874, this canvas situates two of eighteenth-century France's most notorious figures — Louis XV and his last royal mistress Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry — within the luxurious visual language of the Rococo court that both embodied and ultimately contributed to discrediting. Du Barry, a woman of humble origin who rose to unprecedented influence at Versailles through royal favor, became a symbol of the ancien régime's moral corruption in Revolutionary memory, though during her lifetime she was a significant arts patron. Benczúr had absorbed French academic painting's fascination with eighteenth-century court subjects during his Munich years, and this work engages the genre of historical galante scenes that mixed erotic charge with historical illustration. The Hungarian National Gallery's holding of this work reflects Benczúr's willingness to venture beyond Hungarian national subjects into the cosmopolitan repertoire of European academic history painting.

Oil on canvas with a warm, golden palette evoking the silks and gilded interiors of Versailles. Benczúr deploys his academic command of period costume and interior furnishing to create a historically credible setting for the intimate encounter between king and favorite. Facial expressions carry the suggestion of courtly play.