Mademoiselle Ferrand Meditating on Newton

Élisabeth Ferrand knew she was dying when she sat for this. The museum says she wanted a portrait that would keep her alive in the memory of the people close to her, and she died in September 1752. In Paris she was respected for her mathematics and philosophy, and the open book behind her has Newton's name printed across the top of the page.

One of the regulars at her salon was the philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac. Two years after her death he published his Treatise on Sensations, which is built on a thought experiment, a statue that comes to life one sense at a time, beginning with smell, and works out what it could know at each stage. Condillac wrote that she had a greater hand in the book than he did, and its dedication remembers her.