From the classical masters of Greece and Rome to the Andy Warhols and Lucian Freuds of our age, artists have always sculpted and painted the people who mattered and some who didn't. Today in Paris, two major exhibitions celebrate portraiture from two important eras: the High Renaissance of the 16th century, and the period from the late 18th to the early 19th century that ranged from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Both shows feature rarely displayed works from around the world. Both demonstrate, in the same way today's celebrity journalism does, that people are endlessly fascinating.
That...