La Belle Strasbourgeoise

Nicolas de Largillière painted this Strasbourg woman in 1703, and the timing matters. Strasbourg had been a free German-speaking city until 1681, when Louis XIV's troops took it for France, so the town was barely 20 years into being French. The sitter wears the local costume that marked her out: a red skirt under a broad black apron, lace at the cuffs, and above all a wide, dark, extravagant hat trimmed with black lace, a fashion particular to the Strasbourg upper town. Who she actually was, nobody knows for certain, whether a real daughter of the city, a Parisian dressed up, or the painter's own sister. It is the strangeness of the hat that Largillière builds the whole portrait around.