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Gauffier, fled to Florence in December 1793.11 against the backdrop of the Florentine countryside or
According to a report from François Caucault: en plein air, as in the celebrated Portrait of Doctor Penrose
‘…Gauffier is a painter of the erstwhile Académie; his (1798, Minneapolis, Institute of Art), which is with-
wife, born in Rome of French parents, is also a out a doubt the masterpiece of the genre, or in an
painter. They are very talented and work here interior, as in the 1793 portrait of Count Gustav
[Florence]. These are weak souls terrorised by Moritz Armfelt, Swedish minister to the King of
Revolutionary thunder and grovelling to the aristocra- Tuscany (Stockholm, National Museum). Gauffier’s
cy for work. But they are [otherwise] respectable and other aristocratic subjects of this period include sever-
of good character’.12 Nevertheless, while continuing al portraits depicting the young heroes of the revolu-
to wear his monarchist sentiments like a badge of hon- tionary armies including General Dumas (Bayonne,
our, Gauffier would be the only former pensionnaire Musée des Beaux-Arts); AYoung Officer of the Cisalpine
du roi, apart from his friend François-Xavier Fabre Republic (Paris, Musée Marmottan); General
(1766-1837), to refuse allegiance to the République. In Championnet, the future Marechal of Masséna; and Louis,
Paris, during a meeting of the Société populaire républi- son of the Duke of Parma, future King of Etruria.
caine, Gauffier’s former colleague, Wicar, denounced
him as ‘the painter entailed to the infamous Lord Gauffier’s growing notoriety compelled Lucien
Hervey, the English ambassador’.13 In fact, it was Bonaparte, Minister of the Department of the
from very select circles of Italian society, particularly Interior, to summon his return to Paris, but the artist
those gravitating around the poet Alfieri and his suddenly died in Leghorn,15 three months after
spokeswoman the Countess d’Albany, the estranged Pauline, leaving their children orphaned.16 If
wife of Charles Edward Stuart,14 that Gauffier now Gauffier’s reputation initially survived largely based
recruited his clientele. To the small cosmopolitan on his work as a landscape painter, his first biographer,
coterie at the Palazzo Gianfigliazzi the course of histo- Paul Marmottan, specifically emphasised his talent as
ry, even though it had accelerated somewhat alarm- a portraitist: ‘It is though [his portraiture] that he will
ingly, remained a play being projected before their live on in our memory’.17
eyes as if through the lens of magic lantern; vis-a-vis
the world stage, these blasé elegantes affected an aris- This portrait of André-François Miot, ambassador for
tocratic detachment that Gauffier would so admirably the nascent French Republic to the Grand Duke of
capture thus reviving the portrait style of the Grand Tuscany, belongs to the rich gallery of portraits of
Tour. The artist preferred to place his sitters either diplomats that were Gauffier’s much admired stock in

11. On January 13th 1793 Hugues de Basseville, who had been France’s representative to the Vatican, was murdered by a mob with the explicit compli-
city of the Swiss Guards.This dramatic event led to the French colony abandoning Rome in favour of either Florence or Naples.
12. Cited by F. Beaucamp, Le peintre lillois Jean-BaptisteWicard (1762-1834), son œuvre et son temps, Lille, 1939,Vol. I, p. 147, under note 7.
13. Lapauze, Procès-verbaux de la Commune des Arts, 1 vol. (1923), pp. 201-202.
14.The exiled Jacobite claimant to the English throne (better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie).
15. Moniteur universel, 28 brumaire an X, p. 230.
16. Her daughter, Faustine Gauffier, was adopted by the sculptor, Desmarais. She took up residence in Lucca where she established herself as a miniatur-
ist and also became a companion to Elisa Bacciochi. Gauffier’s studio sale in Paris was organised by Chaudet and Mérimée in May 1802 to benefit the
artist’s children.
17. Op. cit., p. 296.

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