18th Century French School, Amusing Double Portrait Of A False Devotee, Followed By Nattier

French school, circa 1750. Circle or follower of Jean-Marc Nattier. Portrait of a lady in Franciscan habit, holding an open copy of La Chasse du Cerf. Oil on canvas presented in a very rich Louis XV rocaille frame and wood and stucco gilded with gold leaf (the frame from the 19th century).

Our beautiful portrait depicts an aristocrat, presented at mid-body, slightly turned to the right, in an architectural column decor. She wears a brown habit with a large hood, wide pleats and a heavy fall, fastened at the waist with a knotted braided rope - an explicit evocation of Franciscan dress. His right hand rests on a large volume placed on a table covered with a blue-green drapery. The book is open to a printed page showing a theatrical text, clearly identifiable as Marc Antoine Legrand's ballet comedy La Chasse du Cerf (first performed at the Comédie-Française in 1726).

This is a commissioned work with a double meaning tinged with irony:The lady is depicted in a garment clearly evocative of Franciscan tertiary dress: loose brown gown and rope belt. This choice of dress does not belong to the worldly register, but to the representation of penitence, humility and renunciation, typical of portraits of noblewomen who have embraced a life of piety after widowhood, a moral crisis or a late conversion.The identification on the title page of the open book, the comédie-ballet La Chasse du Cerf (1726), belongs to galant literature.Marc Antoine Legrand's play features an entertainment that combines comic and mythological episodes to celebrate pleasure. The presence of this book is a deliberate iconographic antithesis to the Franciscan habit, a symbol of austerity and conversion.This contrast reveals a personality situated between two states: a woman who has withdrawn from the world without having left it entirely, or a penitent whose gallant past remains perceptible.

Our painting is thus representative of the lightness of the libertine 18th century, a subtle irony on the part of the painter or the commissioner, in the way they represent proclaimed virtue and internalized intimate pleasures.

This is an amusing, double entendre work ideal for completing an 18th century collection and presenting an anecdote to visitors.

The painting is beautiful, well done, the colors are fresh. It is presented in a beautiful, rich 19th-century frame. Spectacular large-format work.
The painting has been cleaned, formerly reentoiled. The frame has a beautiful gold leaf gilding cleaned by our gilder.

Dimensions of the frame: 90,4x106cm
Dimensions of the canvas: 64cm x 81cm