Portrait Of Françoise-marie De Bourbon, Pierre Gobert's Workshop, Late 17th Century

This elegant presumed portrait of Françoise-Marie de Bourbon depicts her half-length, three-quarters turned, her slender figure standing out against the background of a landscape. The young woman poses in a park and stands near a large terracotta vase where carnations grow. Looking towards the spectator, she has her hair dressed "a la Fontange", with two curly locks framing the forehead. Her hair is raised and adorned by a tiara with rows of pearls and a central ruby which holds a large veil of transparent organza with pearly reflections and embellished with wide golden bands. She is wearing a red satin dress with a silk yoke embroidered with gold threads on the chest. She wears a white lace shirt, the ends of which emerge from her neckline as well as from her sleeves, carefully lifted up with precious stone clips. A golden belt with a buckle set with stones highlights the princess's thin waist. With her left hand she holds a carnation, symbol of passion and marriage. The veil creates an important movement behind the model and thus brings lightness and dynamism to the portrait. The hand raising the dress causes the formation of many folds in the fabrics, which the painter accentuates by illuminating the ridges, and by nuancing the hollow parts in order to give volume to the whole. The direct theatrical lighting accentuates the whiteness of the flesh and the folds of the drapes and detaches the model from the landscape.
Oil on canvas, late 17th century.
Very beautiful gitlwood frame finely carved with sunflowers and laurel leaves dating of 17th century.
Dimensions: h. 47.5 cm, l. 36 cm.
With the frame: h. 66 cm, l. 54.5 cm.

Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, known as "la Seconde Mademoiselle de Blois" 1, born May 4, 1677, at Château de Maintenon, died February 1, 1749, in Saint-Cloud, legitimized daughter of France, by her marriage Duchess of Chartres and duchesse d'Orléans, was a natural daughter whom Louis XIV secretly had from the Marquise de Montespan. Louis XIV gave Françoise-Marie as a husband on February 18, 16923, his nephew Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres, future Regent. They had eight children.
Pierre Gobert (Fontainebleau, 1662 - Paris, 1744) Born into a family of artists, Pierre Gobert began to work for the court at a very young age. In 1682, he received the commission for the Portrait of the Duke of Burgundy, a few weeks old (lost), the first in a long list of portraits of children, a genre in which Gobert most excelled. Accredited to the Royal Academy in 1686, Pierre Gobert only became concerned with its reception, an exceptional fact, fifteen years later. It is true that already overloaded with orders, his career as a portrait painter, notably in Munich for the court of Bavaria, probably left him little time. From 1707, Gobert worked for the court of Lorraine where he had been called by the Duke Leopold. During this stay, he painted an impressive number of portraits which implied the existence of a workshop. On his return to Paris he worked very regularly for the Court, producing portraits of most of the members of the royal family, of which the Palace of Versailles keeps the most interesting examples.