Adelaïde Labille-Guiard

So anyway, ruminating on the vast significance I had ignorantly missed in the sister of Louis l'Infortuné, and poking through history for added details, I discovered with wonderment that Mme. Elisabeth had had her portrait painted within the same Golden Decade by another female artist--of whom, somehow, I had never heard: Adelaïde Labille-Guiard...And, just to see, I Googled her...And: A veritable treasure-trove of art and peculiarly interesting curiosities: (1) Mesdames Le Brun and Guiard were both admitted to the French (Royal?--must've been) Academy on the same day, 31 May 1783--the same year, about three months before (if memory serves) the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air ballon ascended into the heavens in front of the ravished spectators at Versailles, among whom were Count Axel von Fersen and his Sovereign Gustav III. (2) "They were much compared, and declared rivals," said an eye-witness. (3) Actually, anybody with an ounce of taste and judgement can see that Mme. Labille-Guiard is by far the better, infinitely more accomplished artist; at the same time more "painterly" and, within the compass of any painting that she does, capable of doing a much greater variety of things than nice (but rather dull) Mme. Vigée Le Brun ever thought of doing: as witness her self-portrait with her pupils, her portrait of Mme. de Selve, her pastel portrait of the sculptor Le Moynes, and, consummately, her great, state portrait of Mme. Adelaïde--my god, look at the different textures! the play of light! and the triumphant, vivid super-realism of its portrayal of the impossibly, unpleasantly complex character of its subject, Mme. Adelaïde, Fille de France, and one of the principal authoresses of the French Revolution: This was the snobbery, the insufferable pride of race and lineage, that Marie Antoinette kept stubbing her trendy Hapsburg toe against--and which eventually pitched her into the dust.

And then there's Mme. Guiard's appallingly faithful portrait of that monster of cruelty and virtue, the sickening Robespierre--just as he was. Oh my God.