Heinrich Lubomirski als Genius des Ruhms

Vigée Le Brun painted this in the late 1780s, at the height of her life at the French court, where she was Marie Antoinette's favorite portraitist. Within a couple of years that world was gone. The Revolution broke in 1789, the court she served collapsed, and she fled France that October, beginning 12 years of moving between the other courts of Europe. This portrait comes from just before that. The boy is Prince Henryk Lubomirski, a young Polish aristocrat of about ten, brought to Paris by his aunt Izabela, who doted on him and had him painted more than once. She has cast him as a genius of Fame, a winged spirit from Roman belief, rising with one arm lifted.