Giovanna Baccelli

When Gainsborough showed this at the Royal Academy in 1782, it caused a small problem. Giovanna Baccelli was the star ballerina at the King's Theatre in London and, openly, the mistress of the Duke of Dorset, who had commissioned the picture. The Duke's own portrait was hanging in the same exhibition, and to keep up appearances the academy took his down rather than let the pair face each other on the wall. Gainsborough painted her mid-step in the costume from a ballet that had swept London the winter before, ribbons in her hair, her skirt still moving. She danced on for years and later lived at the Duke's great house at Knole in Kent, where this canvas hung until the 1890s.