Maurice, Comte de Saxe, Marshal of France

Maurice de Saxe — Maréchal-Général des Armées de France and the greatest French military commander of his generation — was one of the most celebrated figures in Europe when La Tour portrayed him in 1748. Born the illegitimate son of Augustus II of Poland-Saxony, he rose through military brilliance to become marshal of France and the victor of Fontenoy (1745), a triumph that cemented French military prestige in the War of the Austrian Succession. La Tour's 1748 pastel, in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden — where de Saxe's father had been elector — captures the marshal three years after Fontenoy, at the height of his fame and only two years before his death. The Dresden provenance gives the portrait a charged dynastic meaning: the illegitimate son of Saxony's greatest elector, here immortalised as France's greatest general, returned to the Saxon collection.

Pastel on paper, with La Tour's fully mature technique deployed for one of the most celebrated military figures in Europe. Marshal's uniform, decorations, and bearing are rendered with documentary authority while the face carries La Tour's characteristic psychological penetration beneath the public military persona.