The Spring (La Source)

Jean Marc Nattier was the dominant portraitist of the French court in the first half of the eighteenth century, famous above all for his mythological portraits in which aristocratic women were recast as goddesses or allegorical personifications. The Spring (La Source), painted in 1738, belongs to this refined genre: a real woman idealised as the personification of a natural force — the fresh waters of spring — in a landscape setting that blurs the boundary between portrait and mythological painting. Such works served multiple functions at Versailles: they flattered the sitter, demonstrated the painter's learning, and created an image of female beauty as part of the cosmic order. Nattier's formula proved enormously influential and was widely imitated across the French-speaking world throughout the century.

Nattier's characteristic palette of pearlescent blues and silvers harmonises the sitter's drapery with the water and sky of the landscape setting. The flesh is rendered with smooth, luminous blending, and the loose, naturalistic treatment of foliage and water creates a sense of spontaneous outdoor light.