Madame Elisabeth de France (1764–1794)

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard painted Madame Elisabeth de France around 1787, depicting the younger sister of Louis XVI—a princess famous for her piety, her loyalty to her brother, and her tragic end on the guillotine in 1794. Labille-Guiard was one of the two great women painters admitted to the Académie royale in 1783 (the other being Vigée Le Brun), and she became the portraitist particularly associated with the royal family's female members. Her portrait of Madame Elisabeth was painted just two years before the Revolution would transform the royal family's world irrevocably, and it captures the princess in the composed, dignified manner appropriate to her royal status. Labille-Guiard's advocacy for women artists and her paintings of female royalty make her one of the most significant figures in 18th-century French art.

Labille-Guiard's portrait technique combines the Neoclassical clarity of her training under Guiard and David's circle with a warmth and psychological engagement that distinguishes her finest work. The princess is presented with the formal dignity appropriate to royal portraiture, yet Labille-Guiard avoids the empty ceremonial stiffness that afflicts lesser court portraits. The handling of silk and lace demonstrates her facility with the textures central to aristocratic portrait painting.