Portrait Of A Mother And Her Daughter – French School, Early 18th Century

Oil on canvas. French school from the early 18th century around 1700.
Our painting offers the eye a delicate scene that is unusual in French portraiture: a mother sketching a gesture of tenderness towards her daughter. The mother's hairstyle known as "à la Fontange" and her embroidered corseted dress trimmed with lace place the protagonists in the articulation of the 17th and 18th centuries, a period during which these finery were in vogue.
The delicacy with which this woman brushes the child's chin is a perfect illustration of maternal love. And the bunch of cherries that the little girl holds in her right hand, an evocation of the blood shed by Christ on the cross, is a demonstration of the faith that nourishes her.
A few queens, before our unknown woman, were portrayed with their children. We can cite Marie de Medici with the future King of France Louis XIII, Anne of Austria with her son Louis-Dieudonné, future Louis XIV or Madame de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV, with her two children. Later, Marie-Antoinette would do the same with her three children.
Motherhood has long been a theme reserved for sacred art depicting the Virgin with the Child Jesus. From the 16th century, its symbolic representation is inserted into secular iconography showing mothers in the company of their children in intimate moments, as in our painting, where the role of the mother is exalted.

In a wooden and gilded paste frame with a sculpted motif alternating laurel leaves and oak leaves.
Dimensions: 73 x 60 cm – 90 x 77 cm with the frame