Jean-Marc Nattier

Jean-Marc Nattier found his niche at the court of Louis XV, flattering its women by painting them as goddesses. A duchess becomes Diana the huntress with a crescent in her hair, the king's daughters pose as personifications of water or air, draped in silk and myth.

He had started more soberly and even turned down an offer to work for Peter the Great in Russia. At Versailles he perfected a soft, silvery Rococo portrait, half likeness and half fantasy, and the royal princesses sat to him repeatedly.

Fashions changed toward plainer, more natural portraiture before he died in 1766, and his reputation faded with the style he had served. Many of his sitters still hang at Versailles.