La Renommée

"La Renommée" — Fame or Renown — is an allegorical figure from 1653, one of La Hyre's last major allegorical productions before his death in 1656. The personification of Fame was among the most ancient of allegorical figures, present in Virgil's Aeneid as a swiftly travelling goddess and in Renaissance art typically represented as a winged female figure blowing a long trumpet — the instrument by which great deeds were proclaimed to the world. La Hyre's late-career engagement with the subject may reflect the retrospective mood of an artist in his final years considering the question of artistic legacy and historical memory — subjects to which "Renommée" was directly relevant. The private collection holding (Pierre Rosenberg) has positioned this work within the scholarship of seventeenth-century French painting through the collector's own scholarly contributions as a pre-eminent authority on the period. The painting demonstrates the continued vitality of La Hyre's allegorical production even in the last years of his career.

The winged female figure of Fame — typically in full flight or elevated on clouds, trumpet raised — offers La Hyre the rare opportunity within his allegorical production for a strongly dynamic, airborne composition. The trumpet provides a strong diagonal that energises the pictorial field, while the wings require careful foreshortening appropriate to a figure in motion. La Hyre's late palette — refined through decades of practice — applies the harmonious colour relationships of his best work to a subject that demands more visual energy than his typical seated or standing allegorical figures.