Joseph Siffred Duplessis would probably want you to know that he painted lots of other things besides Benjamin Franklin.

He was one of the French king’s official painters for crying out loud! As notoriously fickle tastemakers, royalty knew that declaring an artist as a court painter, pretty much at any point in history, was serious business. Duplessis joins the ranks of court painters with other greats, including Jan van Eyck, Goya, Velázquez, Titian, Rubens, and countless others who were destined for greatness. Really, the list speaks for itself.

But, as it happens, history is a funny thing, and we’ve kind of forgotten who Duplessis is. Duplessis kicked off his art career by studying with a pupil of Charles Le Brun, an artist who happens to be – ahem – another court painter. Le Brun wasn’t just any old court painter, mind you. He maintained the position of coveted First Painter to Louis XIV, which solidified his position as the unchallenged French art authority. This greatness, and perhaps also the pomposity that accompanies this sort of rank, passed down from teacher to student and down again to Duplessis.

Duplessis painted the infamous Marie Antoinette before her marriage to Louis XVI. Although these particular royals were not destined for greatness, Duplessis experienced fame and notoriety during their reign. But as Spiderman says, with great fame comes great responsibility. Just kidding – it comes with sweet digs and a cushy job! As a sanctioned painter of the French court, Duplessis lived in special apartments in the Louvre and then later served as curator for the new museum at Versailles. The French people believed it should be turned into a museum, since you know, they killed the guy who lived in it previously.

Although you might not immediately know who Duplessis is, you would definitely recognize his work. His best-known work is a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, which reached such epically famous proportions that it became the image used on the one-hundred-dollar bill in the United States. Everyone, American and French alike, loved Duplessis’s original portrait of Benny boy so much that his workshop went crazy making copies so that everyone could get a piece of that colonial cutie pie.