Portrait of Jacques-François de Chastenet, Marquis de Puysegur

Jacques-François de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur, was a French nobleman and military figure, and this 1730 portrait by Largillière belongs to the tradition of aristocratic-military portraiture that ran parallel to his civilian commissions. The Marquis de Puységur family maintained strong connections to French military and court life, and a portrait at this date would have served to document a figure of social consequence in the formal language of aristocratic display. The work's current location is unrecorded, meaning it has circulated in private collections. By 1730, Largillière's male portrait formula was deeply established, and this work would represent his most refined and economical expression of the genre: each element—pose, lighting, costume, background—placed with the confidence of an artist who had resolved these compositional problems thousands of times.

The Marquis's portrait would have incorporated military insignia or attributes appropriate to his rank and service. Largillière's approach to armour—when included—treated it as a reflective metallic surface that required the same attention to highlight and shadow as fabric, with the added complexity of reflected colour from adjacent surfaces.