Portrait of a Lady as Flora

The lady in the portrait by the First Painter to King Louis XIV, Pierre Mignard, director of the Academy of St Luke in Paris and later of the Royal Academy, was long thought to be the king’s mistress, the Duchess of La Vallie`re. Recent studies have cast doubt on the accuracy of this conclusion. Mignard idealised his female sitters and painted them all in the same way. The canvas in question is interesting because here Mignard has painted a so-called “mythological portrait”. He depicts the high-born young lady in the form of the Roman goddess of flowers and gardens and stressed her blossoming age. The mythological portrait was extremely popular in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.