Pomponne II de Bellièvre

Pompone II de Bellièvre (1606 – 13 March 1657) was a French magistrate, ambassador and statesman, ending his career as First President of the Parlement of Paris, from 1653 to 1657.

Early life Bellièvre was the son, nephew, and grandson of eminent men. He was the son of Nicolas de Bellièvre (1583–1650) and Claude Brûlart de Sillery, who married in 1605. His father was Procureur général and also Président à mortier of the Parlement and one of the thirty Conseillers d'État of France. Both of his grandfathers, Pomponne de Bellièvre and Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery, served as Chancellor of France.

Career Bellièvre himself became the head of the magistracy of France, ambassador to England, and in his last years the first President of the Parlement of Paris. While Bellièvre was in England, Cardinal Mazarin gave him the hopeless task of making peace between King Charles I and the Long Parliament. He received the title, Marquis de Grignon, in 1651.

Bellièvre became one of the main benefactors of the Hôpital général de Paris, founded in 1656.

Personal life

Bellièvre married Marie de Bullion, Lady of La Grange-au-Bois, daughter of Claude de Bullion and Angélique Faure (the niece of his grandfather, Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery). They had no surviving children.

The Bellièvre fortune was extinguished in 1675, when his last brother and heir, Pierre de Bellièvre, had to abandon all of his property to his creditors, including Gaspard III de Fieubet, as he was unable to repay his debts.

Character According to the panegyric spoken at Bellièvre's funeral, and later printed, he possessed "pure glory and innocent riches" and was incorruptible, not to be bought at any price. He showed "...charity for the wretched, a vehemence just and inflexible to the dishonest and wicked, with a sweetness noble and beneficent for all". He also had a pleasant and gracious address, with intellectual and charming conversation and an agreeable and intelligent silence. Bellièvre's portrait (pictured above), painted by Charles Le Brun, was engraved by Robert Nanteuil in 1657 and is surrounded by the Latin inscription "POMPONIVS DE BELLIEVRE, SENATVS GALLIARVM PRINCEPS", with a plate size of 327 x 251 mm. Of Nanteuil's work, this has been called "foremost among his masterpieces, and a chief masterpiece of art, being, in the judgment of more than one connoisseur, the most beautiful engraved portrait that exists." Louis Thies wrote of it in March, 1858: When I call Nanteuil's Pompone the handsomest engraved portrait, I express a conviction to which I came when I studied all the remarkable engraved portraits at the royal cabinet of engravings at Dresden, and at the large and exquisite collection there of the late King of Saxony, and in which I was confirmed or perhaps, to which I was led, by the director of the two establishments, the late Professor Frenzel... There is an air of refinement, vornehmheit, round the mouth and nose as in no other engraving. Color and life shine through the skin, and the lips appear red.

In his The Best Portraits in Engraving, Charles Sumner says of Nanteuil's Pomponivs De Bellievre: No doubt there have been as handsome men, whose portraits were engraved, but not so well. I know not if Pompone was what would be called a handsome man, although his air is noble and his countenance bright. But among portraits more boldly, delicately, or elaborately engraved, there are very few to contest the palm of beauty.