Allegorical Portrait Of A Lady Of Quality As Diana The Huntress, 18th Century Style

Allegorical portrait of a lady of quality as Diana the Huntress, 18th century style

This magnificent portrait of a lady of quality is in the style of the 18th century. A young woman is depicted wearing a sumptuous azure-blue gown, enhanced by a broad golden mantle, while she sports a Fontange hairstyle, very much in vogue at court.

This complex hairstyle takes its name from the Marquise de Marie Angélique de Scorailles de Roussille, Duchesse de Fontanges, favorite of Louis XIV, who, during a royal hunting party, having lost her ribbon, used her garter to pull up her messy hair, thus seducing the Sun King and launching a fashion that was to dominate Europe for over twenty years.

Here she is depicted seated in a landscape, in the characteristic Diane chasseresse pose, resting her hand on the head of a hunting dog, while her attributes are arranged at her side, including a quiver full of arrows. This painting is part of the tradition of historiated portraiture, in which contemporary personalities are depicted in the guise of divinities from classical mythology, in order to lend them the moral virtues or symbolic qualities associated with the chosen figure. Here, the representation as Diana embodies not only beauty and eternal youth, but also values of chastity and nobility linked to the practice of hunting, an aristocratic privilege.

France, early 19th century

With frame: 125 cm x 105 cm

Without frame: 108 cm x 87 cm