Madame d'Aguesseau de Fresnes

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a young woman with pale skin, wearing a short wine-red jacket over an ivory-white gown, gazes out at us from this vertical portrait painting. She sits in a chair surrounded by emerald-green cushions, which are covered with a light green floral pattern. The woman’s shoulders are squared toward us as her knees angle slightly to our right. The skirt of her gown is patterned with coin-sized gold dots against the white background, and the scooped neckline of her bodice is trimmed with gold ribbon. The top of at least four buttons on her velvet jacket are buttoned under her bust, and a cinnamon-brown belt with an iron-gray buckle, perhaps a cameo, cinches her waist. Her long, ash-brown hair is loosely pulled up with curls faming her face and falling to her shoulders. One braided plait is interwoven through a loose white turban, the ends of which drape over her shoulders. She has gray eyes under thin brows, a rose-red bow mouth, and her cheeks are tinged with pink. Gleaming, laurel-green drop earrings dangle from her ears. Her right arm, to our left, rests on an oversized green cushion, which balances on the carved, gold arm of her chair. Soft light from the upper left glints on the gold ribbons of the turban and cushion, and on her earrings and jacket buttons. The wall behind her is mottled with smoke gray and moss green. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the upper right, “Mde Le Brun 1789.”