Madame de Pompadour en su bastidor de bordado

By 1763 the Marquise de Pompadour had been the most powerful woman at the French court for years, the king's mistress turned trusted adviser and tastemaker. Drouais paints none of that. He shows her at home in her Versailles apartment, plainly settled at an embroidery frame with a little black spaniel at her side, more like a comfortable, industrious housewife than a royal favourite. She began sitting for it in the spring of 1763 but did not live to see it finished. Pompadour died in April 1764, aged 43, and Drouais completed the picture about a month later. Look closely and you can find the join: the head and shoulders sit on a separate small canvas, painted from life and then set into the larger full-length figure.