Jean-Etienne Liotard’s etched portrait of René Hérault is indebted to the work of seventeenth-century printmakers, particularly Robert Nanteuil. Most obviously, Liotard has used the same conventions to frame the portrait, making it appear as though we see the sitter—in Liotard’s portrait, the lieutenant-general of police, and in Nanteuil’s portrait, a man of the church—through an oval window in a stone wall ornamented with the sitter’s name, titles, and coat-of-arms below. At lower left, Liotard’s tiny inscription, like Nanteuil’s, proclaims his execution of the print as well as his authorship of the portrait upon which this print is based.