Welcome to 1789...

A friend, nirejseki, asked for the portraits of the members of the Committee of Public Safety for a drawing she's planning. I was working on a reply for her with all the links, but since I happened to (a first!) find all of their potraits, I'm going to post it, because it's memorable. I already posted it on my LJ, but I thought posting it here would be useful too. Naturally, I suppose you could do the research by yourself, since they can all be found on the French Wikipedia, by clicking on their names here: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comit%C3%A9_de_salut_public#Le_.C2.AB_Grand_Comit.C3.A9_de_salut_public_.C2.BB

Some articles were updated with new portraits (like the ones of Billaud-Varenne and Hérault de Séchelles).

Some of those portraits sort of frighten me, because suddenly, for once... those men look so real, a level of realism the simple engraving doesn't really have. They stop being just names I stumble on when reading.

So, minus the three robespierristes we already know quite well enough (well, unless you want their portraits too...? might get tough to settle for just one portrait for at least two of them, no? -_-):

( The Nine Other Members of the Committee of Public Safety: less known, less glamour, less cared about or hated Thermidorians. Depending on your point of view. All right, the evil and biased robespierriste I am shuts up now. )

Just in case that interests anyone, I amused myself with statistics. Here are how old the members of the CSP were in 1794 (which also happened to be the final age reached for four members in there -- let's not come back on this):

Lindet: 48.
Collot: 45.
Saint-André: 45.
Carnot: 41.
Barère: 39.
Couthon: 39 (would have been).
Prieur de la Marne: 38.
Billaud: 38.
Robespierre: 36.
Hérault: 35 (would have been).
Prieur de la Côte d'Or: 31.
Saint-Just: 27 (would have been).


Which gives the CSP the average age of: 38,5 years old. Hm, I don't know if that's young or not for an "executive". I'm pretty sure it's younger than most executives we have in western countries right now though... Okay, so it's Saint-Just's fault: he considerably brings down the whole average. :P