Art history is haunted by the foil: the dark star whose diminished luster sets off another€s brilliance. Relegated to this role by modern historians of Revolutionary-era French art, Fran§ois-Andr© Vincent (1746€“1816) is chiefly viewed in the reflection of his contemporary, Jacques-Louis David. The Perfect Foil frees Vincent from this distorting mirror. Offering a nuanced and historically accurate account of Vincent€s life and work, Elizabeth C. Mansfield reveals the artist€s profound influence on the visual culture of the French Revolution€"and, paradoxically, on the art historical narrative that would consign him to obscurity.

The Vincent of The Perfect Foil is an artist whose life and work responded to cultural conditions€"religious difference, emotional bonds, institutional pressures€"only now finding their way into art historical accounts of the period. A successful academician despite his status as a member of the Protestant minority, a leading reformer of arts institutions during the Revolution, the progenitor of French Romanticism, and the husband of one of the period€s most celebrated women artists, Fran§ois-Andr© Vincent emerges in these pages as an embodiment of the ambivalences and contradictions of life in France in the wake of the Enlightenment.

By giving us a detailed and faithful portrait of this artist poised at the turning point of history, Mansfield restores a critically important body of work to its rightful place in the story of French art and reorients Revolutionary-era French art history toward a broader, more inclusive understanding of the period.