Retrato de Madame Émilie Sériziat y su hijo

David painted this in 1795, one of the most precarious years of his life. He had been a fervent revolutionary, had voted for the king's execution and staged the regime's art and pageantry, and when Robespierre fell in 1794 David went to prison twice. Between and after those spells his in-laws, the Seriziats, took him in at their country house. This portrait of Emilie Seriziat, the sister of his estranged wife, with her small son and a bunch of fresh flowers, is his thank-you, painted as a pair with one of her husband. After years of vast political canvases he turned to something plain and domestic, a mother in a simple white dress against a bare ground. Her straw hat, tied with a ribbon, is the sort of unfussed detail he now let himself enjoy.