page_title: Jean de La Fontaine
section_title: Depictions and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Jean de La Fontaine / Depictions and legacy
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Jean de la Fontaine (1621–1695)
context_page_description: Jean de La Fontaine was a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, as well as in French regional languages.
  After a long period of royal suspicion, he was admitted to the French Academy and his reputation in France has never faded since. Evidence of this is found in the many pictures and statues of the writer, later depictions on medals, coins and postage stamps.
context_section_description: While the Fables have an international reputation, celebration of their author has largely been confined to France.  Even in his own lifetime, such was his renown, he was painted by three leading portraitists. It was at the age of 63, on the occasion of his reception into the Académie française in 1684, that he was portrayed by Hyacinthe Rigaud. Nicolas de Largillière painted him at the age of 73, and a third portrait is attributed to François de Troy (see below).
  Two contemporary sculptors made head and shoulders busts of La Fontaine. Jean-Jacques Caffieri’s was exhibited at the 1779 Salon and then given to the Comédie Française; Jean-Antoine Houdon’s dates from 1782. There are in fact two versions by Houdon, one now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and another at the castle of his former patron Fouquet at Vaux-le-Vicomte (see below).
  In Paris there is a full length marble statue by Pierre Julien, now in the Louvre, that was commissioned in 1781 and exhibited at the 1785 Salon. The writer is represented in an ample cloak, sitting in contemplation on a gnarled tree on which a vine with grapes is climbing. On his knee is the manuscript of the fable of the fox and the grapes, while at his feet a fox is seated on his hat with its paw on a leather-bound volume, looking up at him. Small scale porcelain models were made of this by the Sèvres pottery and in polychrome porcelain by the Frankenthal pottery. In the following century small models were made of the bronze statue by Etienne Marin Melingue, exhibited in Paris in 1840 and in London in 1881. In this the poet is leaning thoughtfully against a rock, hat in hand. Also in the Cour Napoléon of the Louvre is the 1857 standing stone statue by Jean-Louis Jaley.
  Another commemorative monument to La Fontaine was set up at the head of the Parisian Jardin du Ranelagh in 1891. The bronze bust designed by Achille Dumilâtre was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle (1889) before being placed on a high stone pedestal surrounded by various figures from the fables. The work was melted down, like many others during World War II, but was replaced in 1983 by Charles Correia's standing statue of the fabulist looking down at the fox and the crow on the steps and plinth below him.
  There are more statues in Château-Thierry, the town of the poet's birth. The most prominent is the standing statue by Charles-René Laitié, which was ordered by command of Louis XVIII as a gift to the town. It was officially set in place in a square overlooking the Marne in 1824. During the Second Battle of the Marne it was damaged and was then moved about the town. Repaired now, its present position is in the square fronting the poet's former house. At his feet the race between the Tortoise and the Hare is taking place. The house itself has now been converted into a museum, outside which stands the life-sized statue created by Bernard Seurre. Inside the museum is Louis-Pierre Deseine’s head and shoulders clay bust of La Fontaine.
  Further evidence of La Fontaine's enduring popularity is his appearance on a playing card from the second year of the French Revolution. In this pack royalty is displaced by the rationalist free-thinkers known as Philosophes, and the ironical fabulist figures as the King of Spades. He was no less popular at the Bourbon Restoration, as is evidenced by the royal commission of his statue. Besides that, there was the 1816 bronze commemorative medal depicting the poet's head, designed by Jacques-Édouard Gatteaux, in the Great Men of France series. More recently there has been a sideways seated view of him in the Histoire de France series.
  The head of La Fontaine also appeared on a 100 franc coin to commemorate the 300th anniversary of his death, on the reverse of which the fable of the fox and the crow is depicted. Another commemoration that year included the strip of 2.80 euro fable stamps, in the composite folder of which appeared a detachable portrait without currency. In 1995 equally, the asteroid 5780 Lafontaine was named in his honour.
  Other appearances on postage stamps include the 55 c
caption: Portrait of La Fontaine attributed to François de Troy
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