Flora

In Venice in the first half of the 16th century, painters made a speciality of half-length pictures of beautiful women, hair loose, flowers in hand, and many of them went by the name of Flora, the Roman goddess of spring. Titian's Flora in the Uffizi is the best known. Paris Bordone painted this one around 1540, and he leans towards display, with chains of pearls, a blue and white dress, a red velvet drape and a basket of flowers at her side.

Who such women were meant to be, a goddess, a bride or a courtesan, is a question scholars have argued over for a long time, and the pictures themselves rarely settle it.

The canvas came to the Louvre in 1903 as a gift from Louis-Alfred Caroillon, comte de Vandeul. His grandmother was Angélique, the daughter of the philosopher Denis Diderot, and his family had kept Diderot's papers for generations.