Comment: |
The picture portrays a man about 40 years old, dressed with a uniform of inspecteur général des poudres des armées de terre et de mer, holding a Leyden jar and sitting behind a desk, with a few books piled in the bottom, left-hand corner. The first known reference to the painting as a portrait of Lavoisier was in 1932, when the Musée de Versailles purchased the work from a collector in Brussels, Dr. E. Schmitz, as a “portrait of Lavoisier” |