Madame Adélaïde en Diane

Madame Adélaïde was the fourth daughter of Louis XV and Maria Leszczyńska, born in 1732, and she grew up at Versailles as one of the Mesdames de France—the collective name for the king's daughters who remained unmarried and resided at court. Nattier painted her as Diana, goddess of the hunt, around 1745, when Adélaïde was approximately thirteen—an age at which the mythological conceit served to celebrate her youth and noble bearing while projecting an image of chaste, sovereign authority appropriate to a princess of France. Diana was a particularly favoured identification for royal and aristocratic women, connoting virginity, independence, and command over the natural world. The painting is now catalogued under the Musées Nationaux Récupération programme, which tracks artworks looted or displaced during the Nazi occupation that have been repatriated to French state collections. Nattier painted several of the Mesdames de France in comparable mythological guises, creating a coherent visual programme that celebrated the royal family as embodiments of classical virtue.

Nattier deploys the visual vocabulary of the hunt goddess with practised confidence: crescent moon at the brow, quiver or bow nearby, and a woodland setting rendered in loose, atmospheric strokes. The young sitter's skin is painted with extraordinary delicacy, befitting her age and status.