Marie Françoise de La Cropte de St. Abre, Marquise d'Argence by Jean-Marc Nattier
Jean-Marc Nattier’s *Marie Françoise de La Cropte de St. Abre, Marquise d'Argence* (1744) sailed straight through the Napoleonic wars and came out the other side, but not before being looted from its original home.
Look at her hands. The right hand adjusts a bow that alludes to Diana the huntress, a classical disguise Nattier loved to give his sitters. The left hand rests in her lap with a stillness that was a rehearsed signal of aristocratic grace. Nattier painted these hands with the same precision he gave the luminous pearls at her neckline and the impossible shimmer of that silvery-blue silk.
Nattier was the go-to portraitist for the ladies of Louis XV’s court, dressing them in mythological costume and making them look like goddesses. This marquise had her portrait done at the height of Rococo fashion, but then Napoleon’s army swept through, and the painting disappeared for more than a century. For decades, the only proof it still existed was a single black-and-white photograph kept in museum archives.
The Met acquired it from a collector who prized its strange, quiet journey. A woman painted to project effortless permanence, whose image almost didn’t survive. What do you notice first, the pearls or the poise?
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Transcript
She looks like a dream of the French court. But this painting vanished for over a hundred years. It was looted during the Napoleonic wars. The bow she touches is an allusion to Diana the huntress. Her left hand rests in her lap, a signal of aristocratic grace. For decades, only a black-and-white photograph proved it still existed. It now hangs in New York, given by a collector who prized its secret history.