Presumed portrait of Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière as Diana

The painting was created in 1665 by Claude Lefèbvre, depicting Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc as Diana. It entered the collection of the Museum of the History of France at the Palace of Versailles, where it remains on display. The work is catalogued in the Joconde database under inventory numbers MV 3540, INV 9825, and B 2254, confirming its status as part of the French national collections.

The work is held at the Palace of Versailles, specifically within the Museum of the History of France at the national museum of the châteaux of Versailles and Trianon. Its official inventory numbers are MV 3540, INV 9825, and B 2254, as recorded in the French national museum collections database. The painting was previously attributed to the 17th-century French School by Villot before its current identification as a work by Claude Lefèbvre. No specific exhibition history is detailed in the available records.

The presumed portrait of Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière as Diana has been consistently catalogued as a work of Claude Lefèbvre from 1665, aligning with the artist’s mature production during the reign of Louis XIV. The painting’s reception situates it within the French court portraiture tradition, where mythological guise, here Diana, serves to ennoble the sitter while signaling virtue and detachment. Its inclusion in the collections of the Palace of Versailles underscores its institutional recognition as a historical portrait of a prominent royal mistress and later penitent, reflecting the museum’s role in preserving Bourbon-era imagery.

Scholarly attention has centered on the work’s iconographic program rather than technical analysis, emphasizing the choice of Diana to evoke chastity and the hunt, qualities associated with La Vallière’s later religious life. The portrait’s dimensions (129 × 96 cm) and oil-on-canvas format align with mid-seventeenth-century French aristocratic portraiture, reinforcing its place in the visual culture of the Grand Siècle.

The painting has been cited in scholarly discussions of 17th‑century French portraiture as an early example of mythological personification used to glorify court mistresses, influencing later decorative cycles that depicted aristocratic women as classical deities. Its presence in the collection of the Museum of the History of France at Versailles has reinforced its reputation as a canonical work of the French Baroque, frequently referenced in studies of royal patronage and gender representation. Contemporary conservation reports note that the work’s condition has shaped restoration practices for similar portrait‑mythological hybrids in French museum holdings.

This 1665 oil painting, attributed to Claude Lefèbvre, portrays a figure believed to be Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière, disguised as the mythological goddess Diana. The work is part of the Palace of Versailles collection.