Elegant c.1795-99 French Portrait Miniature of an Incroyable et Merveilleuse Protester, Revolution

What a spectacular era this young man represents and brings forth to us. He is one of the likely 'idle rich' young aristocratic generation who participated in the c.1795-99 high political fashion statement known as the Incroyables et Merveilleuses (incredibles and marvelous). Their fashion: bright colors, outlandish exaggerated patterns and cropped pants and jackets, huge collars and embroidered vests, dog-ear hair cuts or some guillotine cuts for women (short cropped back, curls swept forward, as if shorn for and hanging down for guillotine's blade). One last requisite item was, of course, the greatly exaggerated thick cravat which you see here - significant as if holding a severed head reattached to the body. The protest: they strolled Paris in rowdy groups, had they portraits painted for one another, generally acting in ways to draw attention to themselves, ostensibly protesting the cruelty of the beheading of their relatives and leaders. A Royalist group, many had families in exile