The best print by the engraver Jean Daullé is based on the last self-portrait by a court painter and director of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture Hyacinthe Rigaud. In that portrait, Rigaud depicted himself painting a portrait of his wife, Élisabeth de Gouy. It is a very rare subject in his work: Rigaud hardly ever painted women.

At the beginning of the 18th century, French engravers followed the traditions of the previous century: they were allowed to work with paintings approved by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. It imposed rather strict limitations on the plots: it favored mythology and historical events and also allowed to engrave portraits on copper. By the middle of the 18th century, the highest point in the development of chisel engraving was the baroque ceremonial portrait, and Hyacinthe Rigaud was the artist who supplied the largest number of originals.

Rigaud´s roaring success started when he came to Paris and applied for membership in the Academy. In August 1684, the young artist was admitted and became an academic painter. A month later, he received his first commercial orders. In 1688, Rigaud painted the portraits of the king’s relatives: Philippe I, Duke of Orleans, and his son Philippe II. He successfully combined the flamboyancy of the French aristocracy with a realistic technique of painting faces and the textures of fabrics, metals, and lacework. That impressed the royal court and Rigaud became the personal painter of Louis XIV. In 57 years, he painted over 2,000 portraits, among which those of five kings: Louis XIV, Louis XV, Charles XII of Sweden, Philip V of Spain and August III of Poland and of the whole French royal court. In 1700, for his paintings Christ on the Cross and Saint Andrew, the Academy granted him the status of a historical painter. In 1702, he became a professor and started teaching, and in 1733, became Rector and Director of the Academy.

Rigaud closely followed the attempts of engravers to use his paintings and mentored the best of them. He was very lucky to meet the engraver Pierre Drevet, who later became his friend, in the 1690s. Drevet was an artist who, by means of graphics, could depict textures no worse than Rigaud himself in his oil paintings. It was in Drevet’s studio that Jean Daullé learned etching and chiseling on copper plates. In the 1730s, he started copying Rigaud’s portraits quite often. In 1742, for his graphic interpretation of Self-Portrait of Hyacinthe Rigaud painting a portrait of his wife Élisabeth de Gouy, he was granted membership in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and a place at the exhibition of the Paris Salon. Today, the copper plate used for Self-Portrait of Hyacinthe Rigaud is stored in the Chalcography Department of the Louvre. During his life, Daullé made about 60 prints.