He wanted to impress and he
was feared: Louis xiv of France, the Sun King, Absolutism incarnate. He
particularly liked to be portrayed as an Imperator, omnipotent,
magnificent and proud. He was remarkably healthy and was known for his
sexual prowess. In Versailles, the magnificent palace he had built to
commemorate himself, no woman was safe from him. Politically, he was
equally successful. His invasion of Holland, his occupation of
Strasbourg and of German territories, the sacking and burning of
Heidelberg and Mannheim not only enraged his contemporaries; Louis XIV
was given bad marks for his wars by later historians as well. His
behaviour those relating to his teeth, all of which he had extracted on
the advice of his physicians, who were woefully incompetent. One
gruesome dental disaster led to another, ultimately leaving the king's
face lopsided. Yet the real reason for his unsmiling portraits is an
aesthetic convention that goes back at least as far as the sombre busts
of the Roman Republic and was given new emphasis in Absolutism. Rulers,
divine or otherwise, were not only held in awe. Those who portrayed them
were expected to observe the conventions of frontality and unsmiling
dignity to enhance the quality of regal aloofness, which ultimately
meant absolute power. Even royal women, little Infantas and the
beautiful queens of Spain, were subject to this austere treatment.
The stern Absolutist convention had a sequel in the
United States. The painter Charles Wilson Peale (1741—1827), who served
in the American Revolution, was a true son of the Enlightenment. A man
of many talents, he advanced early palaeontology, invented several new
types of spectacles and made false teeth. The archetypal portraitist of
Revolutionary War heroes, Peale might be called George Washington's
official portrait painter. All his portraits of the first President of
the United States (including, of course, the variant on greenbacks) are
tight-lipped and unsmiling. Legend has it that George Washington, too,
had trouble with his false teeth. Could they have been made by Peale? In
any case it can be safely assumed that the President, like Louis XIV of
France, was only too aware of the image he owed to his nation and to
history.
