If You Like Joseph Ducreux, You'll Love Democritus the Laughing Philosopher

Joseph Ducreux was a French nobleman, a portrait painter, and engraver who worked at the court of King Louis XVI of France. During his life, he was famed for his miniature portraits and for making the last painting of the king prior to his execution.

But Ducreux found fame again, over two hundred years later when his Portrait de l'artiste sous les traits d'un moqueur became a popular Internet meme. The image was often overlaid with text that rewrote rap lyrics in verbose, archaic terms.

It's easy to see why modern people found Ducreux' artwork funny - it's not what you expect of 18th-century artists. Most portraits of the era depicted their subject with a degree of decorum: standing, sitting at a desk, or perhaps riding a horse. Ducreux' painting is… unusual.

Ducreux was fascinating by physiognomy and produced many unconventional portraits. But he wasn't the only artist in history to create weird or even deliberately ugly art. In the 17th Century, Dutch artists invented the tronie, a kind of comedy portrait.