According to Lamartine, in his History of the Girodins, the monarchical form of government, essentially cautious, was most appropriate for periods of calm and for maintaining the status quo. The republican form of government, by contrast, was ideal for dealing with the crises, the organic transformations, and revolutions that were underway. Following this suggestive comment, it is worth asking whether, just as the French Constitutional Assembly tried in vain to reconcile both extremes by entrusting the legacy of the Revolution to a semi-dethroned king, the founders of the Hispanic American republics did not use the figure of the Liberators in the same manner. To answer this question, this article explores the portraits from the 1820s of Agustín de Iturbide and Simón Bolívar by diplomats Miguel de Santamaría and José Anastasio Torrens.