Explore the Commission and rediscovery about the Background of this artwork.
The Portraits of the Insane were commissioned by Étienne-Jean Georget, a doctor at La Salpêtrière.  The portraits remained largely unknown for decades after their creation, until they were rediscovered in an attic in Baden-Baden, Germany in 1863.: 22   The house and portraits belonged to the doctor Adolphe Lacheze.: 22   Some sources indicate that Lacheze discovered the portraits,: 22  while others claim it was the journalist and art critic Louis Viardot.: 13   Viardot assisted Lacheze with selling the portraits.: 22 Viardot described the portraits in a letter from December 6, 1863, which was then published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (January 1864).: 22  Regarding Monomaniac of Envy, he wrote, "her monomania was not, however, of fury, nor even wickedness, but of envy, of which Voltaire said, ‘She hates the living, courts the mould’ring tomb.’ This unhappy woman could not, for example, see herself, without feeling an inner rage, expressed by a gnashing of the teeth and bloodshot eyes.”: 43
Louis Viardot La Salpêtrière