Louis XVI's farewell to his family

Les Adieux de Louis XVI à sa famille, one of Delaperche's most accomplished drawings, is typical of the cult of the royal family that accompanied Louis XVIII's rise to power, and of which Delaperche offers several examples.

Separated from his family in the Temple prison since the start of his trial, Louis XVI was allowed to bid them farewell on the eve of his execution. This last interview was recorded by Jean-Baptiste Cléry, the king's last valet, in his diary, published in London in 1798. It took place in the dining room, behind a glass partition from which the commissioners could watch the prisoners, and Cléry witnessed the scene:

"They were all bent over him [Louis XVI], and often held him in their arms. This scene of sorrow lasted seven quarters of an hour, during which it was impossible to hear anything; one could only see that after each sentence of the King, the sobs of the Princesses redoubled, lasted a few minutes, and then the King began to speak again. [...] He pronounced this farewell so expressively that the sobbing redoubled. Madame Royale fell unconscious at the feet of the King, whom she was embracing; I picked her up and helped Madame Elisabeth to support her: the King, wanting to put an end to this heart-rending scene, gave them the most tender embraces, and had the strength to tear himself from their arms." (Cléry, 1798, p.224-225)

The publicity for this farewell was first and foremost visual, with the distribution of prints that preceded the publication of Cléry's work, such as the one published in 1794 in France by Jean-Baptiste Vérité after a drawing by Pierre Bouillon, or the one by Charles Benazech in England, which became the most famous in France. Delaperche's invention derives from another print produced across the Channel, stippled by Mariano Bovi after a design by Domenico Pellegrini. While the French artist's composition imitates its order - figures arranged in the same order, in a similarly uncluttered interior, between a drapery on the left and an open door on the right through which Louis XVI is about to exit - it exaggerates all its terms and pushes the representation of passions to its paroxysm. Melodramatic language also finds a textual equivalent in the account of the King's confessor, Abbé Edgeworth, published in 1815:

"Even though I was locked in the room where the King had left me, I could easily make out the voices; and, in spite of myself, I witnessed the most touching scene that had ever struck my ears. No, my pen will never be able to convey its heart-rending power. For almost a quarter of an hour, not a single word was spoken. They were neither tears nor sobs; they were piercing cries, which must have been heard outside the tower. The King, the Queen, Monseigneur le Dauphin, Madame Elisabeth, Madame Royale, all lamented at once, and the voices seemed to merge." (Edgeworth, 18158, p.68-69)

Delaperche is faithful to this vision when he depicts Marie-Antoinette and Mme Élisabeth in disarray, expressing the most extreme despair through violent gestures, while the young Marie-Thérèse falls into syncope. But the faces, with their lack of individuality, are not portraits, and the hero himself is no more than an idea of Louis XVI, his bloated physiognomy aiming for emphatic expressiveness. The sense of theatricality, once assimilated through contact with the works of David, is combined with the aesthetics of excess cultivated in England by Füssli and his circle.

But Les Adieux de Louis XVI à sa famille is much more than a poetic exercise. A lifelong legitimist, Delaperche interprets recent history through his own personal prism, having experienced the pain of a definitive family separation in 1812, when, absent from Moscow, the retreat from Russia forced his two sons, enlisted in the Fézensac regiment, to flee without return, without his being able to bid them farewell.