This article reveals the political motivations surrounding the U.S. Congress's request for state portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 1779 and the French ambassador's presentation of them in 1785. The New York-Philadelphia mercantile faction of republican moderates requested the royal portraits as part of a strategy for both obtaining foreign aid and establishing the credibility of the republic. Competing political interests threatened these diplomatic objectives: the radical faction of Congress distrusted the Bourbon monarchy and state portraiture, and the French ministry was determined to assure American adherence to the alliance and to dispense royal gifts on its own terms.