The Bride

A young woman stands in a white dress that leaves her shoulders bare, a long veil falling behind her and her hands folded over a small dark book. The Louvre's title calls her a bride and identifies her only by her position, the servant of Édouard Cibot, a Paris painter of history scenes and landscapes who was about the same age as Corot. Her own name is not given. The date is loose as well, since the museum places the picture only somewhere between 1825 and 1850. It stayed with Corot. The red stamp at the lower left, VENTE Corot, was put on the pictures sold from his studio after his death in 1875, and the same sale left a wax seal on this canvas. Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, a painter and collector who revered Corot, gave it to the Louvre in 1906.