Tuesday, October 6, 2015

France's Most Famous Woman Artist

From the BBC:
Probably the most famous of Elisabeth Louise Vigee le Brun's paintings is the monumental portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette and her three children, normally on display at the royal palace in Versailles. The queen looks serious and demure - nothing like the gadabout many took her to be. Her elder boy - the dauphin - points to an empty crib, where there should have been a baby girl had she not died. Painted in 1787, two years before the Revolution, Marie-Antoinette and her children was a clear attempt to rehabilitate the image of the unpopular Queen, whose image had just been dragged deeper into the mud by the so-called diamond necklace affair (in which a woman impersonating her had defrauded the crown jewellers). This was the queen as dynastic mother, faithfully offering her children to the nation. (Read more.)
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