Portrait of the Marquise d'Aguirandes

Like many French portraitists active during the ancien régime, François-Hubert Drouais was skilled at veiling the physical imperfections of his subjects. This portrait certainly has this quality: the face has been idealized, smoothed, and perfected, but the focus of the painting is less on the Marquise and more on her elegant gown, which is a particularly fine rendering of eighteenth-century printed cloth, with the brilliant gold and white fabric strewn with meticulously detailed flowers and lace.