In the context of Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki, explain the Influences and scholarship of the Analysis.
The portrait has been described as one of David's masterpieces, and marking the return to prominence of equestrian portraiture in European late 18th-century painting. The art historian Lorenz Eitner notes the influence of two 17th-century Flemish Baroque painters, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, on David's 1781 portrait, and argues that the painting "offers a premonition of the manner in which [David] was later to treat modern, national subjects". According to Antoine Schnapper, the painting recalls van Dyck's 1634 equestrian portrait of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano, a sketch of which David had completed prior to painting the Polish nobleman.Schnapper also concludes that the "horse's forequarters" correspond to a 17th-century tapestry fragment illustrating the story of Publius Decius Mus, a 4th-century BCE Roman consul known for sacrificing himself during the Second Latin War. The tapestry, designed after a composition originally painted by Rubens in 1618, had been copied by David sometime prior to 1780 and later exhibited at the Louvre. The importance of Rubens is also noted by the American art historian Robert Rosenblum who described the horse in Potocki's portrait as a "Rubensian stallion". In examining the formal qualities of the composition, the French scholar of 18th-century art Charlotte Guichard highlights the atypical placement of the artist's signature found on the dog's golden collar in the bottom left corner of the painting. She suggests that by "breaking dynamically into the space of representation, David's glittering name shines forth, catching the light and the viewer's attention".Scholars have also addressed the political resonance of the painting. According to Palmer, the portrait might symbolize the "prerevolutionary debate" of whether the nobility were "superior merely by blood or also of mind". Analyzing Eastern European representation in the late 18th-century Western art, historian Larry Wolff considers that the motif of horsemanship alluded to the "taming and harnessing" of Eastern Europe more broadly, in common with other works of art from the 1780s. He observes that "the Polish nobleman astride a perfectly poised, intensely muscled horse, head bent in submission beneath a dramatic mane" is depicted with great discipline. Moreover, the French art historian Philippe Bordes positions the painting alongside David's other contemporary portraits of prominent social figures—including the 1788 depiction of the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze—created by an artist he asserts was "determined to engage his talent to climb the social ladder".
hat formal Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece 1788 depiction of the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife Potocki Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano tapestry Roman consul Anthony van Dyck taming nobleman Louvre Flemish Baroque pl nobility Publius Decius Mus Baroque Antoine Schnapper Latin War stallion prerevolutionary Lorenz Eitner Robert Rosenblum equestrian portrait Rubens social ladder Second Latin War sacrificing