Benjamin Franklin — The Philosopher

Benjamin Franklin arrived in France in December 1776, seventy years old, representing a Congress that could not pay its army. Paris had never seen anything like him. He wore a plain brown suit and no wig at a court built on silk and powder, and the city decided he was the living image of the natural philosopher.

He used it. His face appeared on medallions, snuffboxes and rings. Behind the charm he ran a working embassy from a house at Passy — loans, arms, ships, prisoners, intelligence. When Saratoga gave him something to bargain with, he signed the Treaty of Alliance on February 6, 1778, and brought France into the war.

The painting shows him as Paris saw him: the plainest man in the room, and the one everyone was watching. He stayed nearly nine years.

Everything in the room is gold leaf and candle flame except the man standing in it. Franklin's coat is the color of a Pennsylvania barn, and the painter lets it swallow the light the paneling throws back. He holds a folded paper loosely, spectacles low on his nose, mouth set somewhere between patience and amusement.

Behind him, half out of focus, courtiers in powder and silk lean together. They are the ones being observed. The eye returns to the buckled shoes and the steady, unbothered stance.