Lady with Cupid's Arrow
Miniature portraits were usually supposed to remind their owner of a beloved person and were to be kept private. For this reason, miniature painting allowed motifs which would have caused great offence in large-format portrait painting. This lady with blonde curly hair figures as an armed hunter from Diana' s entourage in front of a wooded landscape. She is wearing a daring translucent gown of tulle which partly reveals her left breast 1 . She has captured a butterfly, a motif which probably carries the same significance as the captured or dead bird: the lady has lost her innocence. Moreover, Diana and her entourage were considered chaste and unapproachable, which suggests that the lady wanted to indicate that she was not easy to conquer. Her yearning look completes the message of love. Her face, which is directly turned towards the observer, corresponds to the classicist ideal of unaffected immediateness.
B.P.
1 Augustin painted only a few miniatures with an erotic aspect, among which are a portrait of a nude lady lying on leopard fur from 1790 (Wallace Collection, London) and a portrait of a lady with bare breasts playing the lyre from 1795 (Louvre, Paris). The posture of the lady with her left elbow resting on an object can be found in many of Augustin's portraits from the 1790s.
