Note 54 — Chapter II · The History of the “Ambassadors” from 1654 to the Present Day. Chronology of the Picture.

Camusat himself possessed portraits of Guillaume, Seigneur Deschenetz, and Gaucher, Seigneur de Vanlay, brothers of Jean the Ambassador, as well as that of their cousin, Joachim de Dinteville, head of the elder branch of the family, whose residence was at Dinteville in Champagne. The two first-named portraits Camusat left by will (Paris, Bibl. de l’Institut, Coll. Godefroy, vol. 308, f. 116), to D’Hozier, author of the “Nobiliaire de Champagne”; that of Joachim de Dinteville, to the Abbé Bonhomme, a well-known collector of the time at Troyes. (See Bonnaffé, “Les Collectionneurs de l’ancienne France”). The indifference displayed by the Marquis de Cessac to Dinteville records, in allowing Camusat to acquire these portraits (either at the time of the sale of Polisy, or earlier), brings into strong relief the value placed upon “The Ambassadors,” which seems to have been the only picture retained. This is the more striking, as M. de Cessac possessed, it appears, a “Cabinet” of portraits of some interest, derived from the neighbourhood of his family estates, Cessac and Cazillac. Two of these were reproduced for Du Chesne’s “Hist. des Cardinaux François” (Paris, 1660, pages 426 and 521). The two Cardinals in question belonged respectively to the dioceses of Cahors and Limoges; proving sufficiently that the Marquis de Cessac who owned their portraits was François de Cazillac, and not, as M. Bonnaffé states (“Dict. des Amateurs français”), Louis de Castelnau, the notorious card-player, whose property lay in quite a different part of the country. (See also note, page 15.)