This relatively early work (1679) was written for Johann Friedrich of Hanover (d. 1679) in the ‘mirror of princes’ style. Modelled partly on Pliny's Panegyricus, written for Trajan, the more fulsome and extravagant praises of Duke Johann are offset by a number of interesting passages on the proper education of princes, on the kinds of virtues which they ought to cultivate, which become particularly important when one recalls that Leibniz favored relatively absolute concentrated power and had to rely on princely virtue as the only check to arbitrary rule. The Portrait reveals Leibniz' extraordinarily wide acquaintance with classical writers, and contains a passage on the nature of justice which is, in many ways, his most radical pronouncement on that subject. (The original text is contained in vol. IV of Klopp's edition.)

Since the order of states is founded on the authority of those who govern them, and on the dependence of peoples, nature, which destines men for civil life, causes them to be born with different qualities, some to command, others to obey, so that the power of sovereigns in monarchies, and the inequality of those who command and those who obey in republics, are founded no less in nature than in law, and in virtue than in fortune: thus princes must be above their subjects by their virtue, and by their natural qualities, as they are above them by the authority which the laws give them to reign according to natural law and civil law – just as the first kings of the world, who, having been elevated to the governance of peoples through their virtue and their intellectual advantages, commanded as much by nature as by law, and by merit as by fortune.