Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu

This remarkable triple portrait shows Cardinal Richelieu, one of the most powerful men in seventeenth-century France, captured from three distinct angles on a single canvas. The grey-haired statesman appears in right profile, frontal view, and left profile, wearing his scarlet liturgical skullcap and cape with the blue ribbon of the Order of the Holy Spirit. An inscription above the right head notes that "of these two profiles, this is the better."

Philippe de Champaigne painted this work not as a display piece but as a practical tool for sculptors. The canvas was sent to Italy so that the sculptor Francesco Mochi could model a marble bust without requiring the Cardinal to sit in person. Gianlorenzo Bernini likely also used it as reference for his own 1641 bust of Richelieu. The practice of sending painted triple portraits to distant sculptors followed a tradition established by Anthony van Dyck's famous triple portrait of Charles I.

Despite its functional purpose, the painting possesses a quiet grandeur. Champaigne reveals subtle shifts in the Cardinal's expression across the three views, suggesting a complex personality behind the composed exterior of France's chief minister.