Sophie de Tott as Bacchante

A young woman smiles out at you, cheeks flushed, a wreath of grapes and vine leaves in her hair. She is dressed as a bacchante, a follower of Bacchus, the ancient god of wine, and Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun painted her this way in 1785. Vigee Le Brun was then the favourite portraitist of Marie Antoinette, and it was fashionable to be shown in the guise of a mythological figure rather than in ordinary modern dress. The title attaches the name of Sophie de Tott, a painter of the day, yet the Clark, which owns the work, notes it was probably never meant as a likeness of one real person. It was painted four years before the Revolution swept away the court world that prized exactly this kind of charming disguise.