Selbstbildnis mit ihrer Tochter Julie

Vigee Le Brun painted herself holding her daughter Julie in 1789, and it is hard to imagine a calmer picture coming out of that year. She was the favourite portraitist of Marie Antoinette, which in 1789 had become a dangerous thing to be. She dresses herself and nine-year-old Julie in loose classical robes, in the Greek fashion just coming into style, and folds them into a tender pyramid that borrows straight from Raphael's Madonnas. There is no hint here of the crowds filling the Paris streets. Within months of finishing it, as the Bastille fell and the monarchy she was tied to began to collapse, she packed up Julie and slipped out of France, and would spend 12 years painting her way across the courts of Europe.