The Feast Of Dido And Aeneas: An Allegorical Portrait Of The Family Of The Duc And Duchess Of Maine

Medium: Oil On Canvas
Size: 160 x 202 cm (63 x 79.5 in)
Signed: dated and inscribed on the artist’s portfolio left of centre: …/…/par fra…/De Troy/En 17…/…/…/donné/par/s.a./Monseigneur/le duc du Maine

Provenance: Duke and Duchess du Maine; Count Horace de Choiseul; His sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, May 7, 1897, lot 1; de Boisgelin collection; His sale, Paris Galerie George Petit, May 20 - 21, 1898, lot 200; Private Collection, England; With Wildenstein, New York, from whom purchased; Private Collection, Indianapolis.

The principal figure in this painting, Louis Auguste de Bourbon, Duke du Maine (1670-1736) and his brother, the Count of Toulouse were two of several bastard children of Louis XIV invested with enormous wealth by their indulgent father. The Duke du Maine and the Count of Toulouse owed much to their extraordinary mother, the beautiful Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart-Mortemart (1641-1707), a daughter of the Marquis, later 1st Duke of Mortemart. Mme de Montespan bore the King seven children, entrusting their education to her friend and protégé, Mme Scarron, the future Madame de Maintenon who would later replace Athénaïs in the King’s affections and became his second, secret wife. Athénaïs’s children by Louis XIV were legitimised in 1673 and raised to the rank of Princes du Sang in 1714 (this status was later denied them, in a 1717 edict of Louis XV), causing considerable resentment on the part of those born to that august rank.