Born July 18, 1659, in Perpignan, Roussillon; died Dec. 29, 1743, in Paris. French portrait painter. Member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1700; rector, from 1735).
Rigaud, who was influenced by A. van Dyke, was the favorite artist of the royal family and the aristocracy. His portraits served as a model for 18th-century European formal portraiture. A sense of splendor and grandeur was combined with individualistic characterization (for example, Portrait of Louis XIV, 1701, Louvre, Paris). Interest in genuine human character is revealed in Rigaud’s informal portraits of artists and writers (for example, Portrait of B. Fontenelle, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).