A Chronicler of Parisian Elegance: The Life and Art of Nicolas de Largillière Nicolas de Largillière, born in Paris in 1656, emerged as one of the most sought-after portraitists of his era—a painter not of kings and queens but of the rising bourgeois class. His canvases weren’t grand historical narratives or mythological allegories; they were intimate studies of wealth, status, and self-fashioning in a society undergoing profound transformation. Largillière didn't merely paint faces; he captured an *attitude*, a burgeoning sense of individual importance that defined the French elite during t…