Nicolò I Erizzo's portrait

Portrait of Niccolò I Erizzo with his children. The painting was made by Sebastiano Bombelli in 1694, the year of Nicholas Erizzo's appointment as ambassador to the court of King Louis XIV.
Niccolò was born in Venice on 30 July 1655; an anonymous biography describes him as an irascible, ambitious, superb man and lover of luxury and excesses. All this, did not prevent him from following a prestigious diplomatic career: he was chief magistrate of Vicenza, ambassador for the Serenissima to Louis XIV, at the papal court, and also in England by Queen Anna Stuart. Devoted to his family, he had thirteen children whom he brought with him to the various diplomatic offices to which he was sent.