Madame Hippolyte Flandrin, née Aimée Ancelot

Hippolyte Flandrin married Aimée Ancelot in 1843, and three years later he painted her standing in a black dress against a dark green wall, her right hand raised to her cheek, her left arm folded across her waist, a red flower pinned at her breast. The pose has a source close to home. In 1845 his teacher Ingres had finished his portrait of the Comtesse d'Haussonville, who leans with a hand raised to her chin in just this thoughtful way, and Flandrin gave his wife the same gesture in mirror image.

He wrote his name and the date in capitals on the furniture at the left and slipped in the Roman numerals, writing MVCCCXLVI where MDCCCXLVI was meant. Aimée outlived her husband by 18 years and died in 1882. The portrait stayed in the family for well over a century, first with their daughter Cécile, then with the descendants of Hippolyte's brother Paul, also a painter, and in 1984, on the occasion of a Flandrin exhibition, they gave it to the Louvre.