Porträt von Madame David

David painted his wife Charlotte in 1813, when he was First Painter to Napoleon and the Empire was already cracking after the disastrous retreat from Russia. Their marriage had a sharp history behind it. 20 years earlier, at the height of the Terror, Charlotte had left him over his politics, for he had voted as a deputy for the execution of Louis XVI, and the couple divorced. In 1796, after he had been imprisoned and the fever of those years had cooled, the two remarried. Here she sits in white silk and a great spray of feathers, turned slightly, settled and composed. He made it as a companion to a portrait of himself, a pair of ageing spouses who had found their way back to each other.