Henriette of France as Flora

In 1745 Anne Henriette was 18, one of the unmarried daughters still kept at Versailles. Six years earlier her twin sister Louise Elisabeth had been sent to Parma to marry, while Henriette remained at the court of her father, Louis XV. Here she reclines as Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and of spring, a wreath in her hair, blossoms in her lap, her feet in light sandals. The guise fit a young woman at the opening of her life. She never married, and she died of smallpox in 1752, aged 24. The same year Nattier turned another of the king's daughters into Diana the huntress, and the two canvases hang together now in Florence.