Mademoiselle Brongniart

Emilie Brongniart was about eight when Vigée Le Brun painted her, in 1788 or 1789, and the two families were close. The painter's daughter Julie was only seven months older, and the girls often played together. Emilie's father was the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, who built grand townhouses for rich Parisians and would later design the Paris stock exchange and lay out the cemetery of Père Lachaise. Here his daughter wears a white scarf knotted round her head, a plain white dress and a sheer shawl. She has one hand inside a green silk bag full of wool, a red ball lies on the ledge in front of her, and she looks up at us, curious and quite at ease. In the autumn of 1789, before Vigée Le Brun left France for Italy, it was the Brongniarts who gave her a place to stay.