Joseph Vivien was a French portraitist who worked mainly in pastel. At the age of twenty, he began to study in Paris, among others under Charles Le Brun. During a stay in Brussels, he met the Bavarian Elector Max Emanuel and portrayed him for the first time in 1699. There is evidence, that Vivien stayed in Munich in 1706 and in 1710, where he painted members of the Elector's court. In 1712, he returned to live in Paris, but also worked for the Elector of Cologne, who resided in Bonn. On one of his journeys, Vivien died in Bonn in 1734. The self-portrait, which today is in the Uffizi Gallery and to which Roland Schauls refers here, was commissioned by the Bavarian Elector Max Emanuel in 1699. It was to be a gift for Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici. The MNHA owns a work by Vivien: a painting of Max Emanuel as a victorious general.