Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson: Benoît Agnès Trioson Reading a Book (1797)

Born Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy in 1767, Girodet suffered the death of his father in 1784 and his mother in 1787. Dr. Benoît-François Trioson, a close friend of his parents, then took the young artist under his wing, arranging for his first showings in Paris. This 1797 portrait of Trioson’s son, Benoît-Agnès, shows the eight-year-old paging through an illustrated Bible, his melancholy look perhaps explained by the death of his own mother only two years before.

Trioson ultimately adopted Girodet, who then added the doctor’s name to his own.