French school; 18th century

French school; first third of the XVIII century.
"Portrait of a military man".
Oil on copper.
It presents restorations on the pictorial surface.
Measurements: 9 x 9 cm.

From the Renaissance the miniature portraits, framed in a circle or oval, were pieces for private contemplation. Considered as jewelry, in the seventeenth century they became pieces of personal adornment or a gift object, to be mounted as jewelry. They were made in a great variety of techniques, such as oil on copper, tin or ivory, gouaches on parchment or cardboard and, since the 18th century, watercolor on ivory. This delicate art will be lost since the second half of the 19th century, in parallel to the development of photography.

The most common in this type of pieces during the 19th century were historicist representations, often set in the preceding century. However, the portrait presented here picks up the spirit of the eighteenth-century portrait-jewel to apply it to modern times, capturing the image of a real man of his time, no longer an ideal recreation of a romantic type.