MASP

According to Xavier Salmon, who studied the work Portrait of a Bride with Flowers (Charlotte Aglaé d’Orléans, known as Mademoiselle de Valois?) in detail, the canvas probably decorated the residence of Elisabeth de Clermont-Tonnerre, the Duchess of la Rochefoucauld, which was located at rue de Lille, in Paris. He attributed the work definitely to Gobert on the strength of numerous portraits painted by the artist and kept in various collections, such as the Museum of Versailles. The portrait of this young girl in an outdoor scene depicts her with her right arm around the curvature of a vase containing orange blossoms, an iconographic attribute in fashion with contemporary portraitists, indicating her betrothal. Salmon’s study of the Masp work finds all the most typical characteristics of this type of painting, repeated with only details varying in at least three other portraits identified by the researcher, that of the Marquise de Gondrin as Venus at Nymphenburg Castle in Munich, and two other versions of the young woman in the Masp work, one kept until 1992 at the Boston Museum (Christie’s New York, January 14, 1993, lot 34) and the other, at Wilhelmshöhe Castle, Hesse, Germany. Salmon is cautious regarding the mention on the Wilhelmshöhe portrait, which has the sitter as Charlotte Aglaé d’Orléans (1700-1761), known as Mademoisellle de Valois, the daughter of Philippe II d’Orléans, who in 1720 was to marry Francesco Maria d’Este, Duke of Modena. The taste for stereotyped norm of beauty tended to create a certain uniformity of features, greatly hampering attempts to identify the model, here shown with attributes typical of the repertoire of the early Louis XV gallant portrait. The rigid pose, the clothing and hair details, the enhanced color of the flesh and the garland of flowers – an obligatory detail – all combine to date the model in the 1720s.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

---