(Lâon 1743–1811 Paris)
Portrait of a lady wearing an antique costume and a diamond bracelet
signed and dated lower left: Berthélemy/an 8.,
oil on canvas, 60 x 49.5 cm, framed

This painting represents the highly developed French portraiture of the Directoire period as well as the latest fashion. It is also interesting as a historical document as it is dated according to the Revolutionary calendar which was designed to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and was also part of a larger attempt at decimalisation in France. L’ An 8 was the eighth year of the constitution, the painting is therefore dated 1799. Incorporating elements of the art of Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun as well as Jacques-Louis David, it is a characteristic work of the era.

Depicted in this work is a lady of the Parisian Salon Society, a so-called “Merveilleuse”, and the female counterpart to the Parisian dandy, termed the “Incroyable”. Both were a product of the greatly hedonistic and frivolous French society at the turn of the century, the last chapter of the French Revolution just before the installation of the Premier Empire. After the dangers and oppressions of the Jacobin Terreur and the execution of Robespierre in 1794, Parisians began to enjoy life again, and with astonishing vigor, creating a luxurious climate only comparable to that of the last days of the ancient Régime. Whether as catharsis or in a need to reconnect with other survivors of the Terreur, they greeted the new freedom with an outbreak of luxury and decadence. They held hundreds of balls and started fashion trends in clothing. Arts and crafts flourished again. The newly founded fortunes sought ennoblement through parallels to the antique, and Rome and Greece in particular, as whose rightful heir the Republic was styled. Therefore there is the choice of a yellow silk Peplops, a dress in the Greek fashion, a historicism underlined by the bracelet, which is also worn “a l’antique” on the upper arm. The Merveilleuses shocked Paris with dresses and tunics modeled after the ancient Greeks and Romans, as seen in the present work, cut of light or even transparent linen and gauze, sometimes so revealing that they were termed “woven air.”

In addition to the notorious Madame Tallien, famous Merveilleuses included Anne Françoise Elizabeth Lange, Juliette Récamier and Hortense de Beauharnais. Parisian society compared Germaine de Staël and Mme Raguet to Minerva and Juno and named their garments for Roman deities: gowns were styled Flora or Diana, and tunics were styled à la Ceres or Minerva. Berthélemy was a popular artist at the turn of the century. He had been a student of Noél Hallé and won the Prix de Rome in 1767. Later he was a Professor at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture and numerous private and public commissions, among them the Hôtel de l’Intendance de Champagne in Châlons-sur-Marne, demonstrate his popularity. Shortly before he painted the present portrait, he accompanied Napoleon on the Italian Campaign and painted some of the battles for the General. In addition, he was chosen to catalogue some of the Italian art treasures Napoleon was to bring back to Paris. Given this relative closeness to the General, the suggestion that the unknown lady may be identified as one of the Bonaparte sisters does gain credibility.