Portraits such as this are a reminder that history was not shaped only by royalty and the very wealthy. This is Jacques Hurault de Vibraye (1514–1588), one of the countless senior officials whose names have largely disappeared from popular history, despite spending a lifetime helping to run a kingdom during one of its most turbulent periods. Painted by an unknown French artist in the late sixteenth century, the portrait preserves the face of a man who was effectively a senior civil servant and, judging by the fact that he remained in royal service, was presumably rather good at it.
Hurault served the French Crown as a diplomat, councillor and senior administrator during the French Wars of Religion, when the country was repeatedly threatened by political instability and religious conflict. I imagine that most visitors to the gallery will never have heard of him, yet this painting has outlasted the political disputes, the court intrigue and probably almost every building in which he worked.
That is one of the pleasures of provincial art galleries. They can display a portrait of someone nearly nobody has heard of, painted by an artist whose identity has been lost, accompanied by a label that tells us very little about either of them. So this is effectively a blog post noting my satisfaction that an artwork has survived for more than four centuries without revealing very much at all. I rather like that it is there.