Madame Récamier

Juliette Récamier was the most painted beauty of her generation. As a young woman she sat for Jacques-Louis David and for François Gérard, when her Paris salon drew the writers and politicians of the Consulate. Gros came to her late. By about 1825, under the restored Bourbon monarchy, she was in her forties and long past the years that had made her famous, and it is that woman he shows, poised and a little guarded. The canvas travelled far from Paris. A French marquis who settled in Croatia after 1870 gave it away, and it hangs today in the Strossmayer Gallery in Zagreb, where the staff call it their Mona Lisa.