Portrait of Juliette Récamier

Juliette Récamier was the most admired hostess in Napoleon's Paris, and around 1800 she sat for the great Jacques-Louis David. She found his version too cold and severe, and while it was still on the easel she quietly commissioned this warmer one from David's own pupil, François Gérard. When David heard, he put down his brushes and left his own portrait forever unfinished. Today both survive, the teacher's austere and abandoned, the student's soft and complete. Gérard shows her barefoot in white, half-turned on a couch, with the languid charm that made her famous, and she herself preferred it. The marble around her hints at an antique bath, the neoclassical taste that ruled French rooms in these years.