Catalogues

Lady in Brown Dress

Depending on their view on portrait painting and their use of picture elements, certain miniaturists specialized either on male or on female sitters. Sicardi was a lady's portraitist. He knew how to flatter a lady's outward appearance by painting her mouth small and delicately smiling; a specific characteristic of his portraits are the wavy eye-lids which give vivid intensity and bewitching charm to the lady's face. This lady painted by sixty-year-old Sicardi in 1806 corresponds to the above-explained scheme and shows that the ideal of beauty of the 18th century was still popular in the Empire. Sicardi's accurate painting technique, his regular brush guidance and soft modelling resemble Augustin's style. Louis Marie Sicard wished to make his name sound more Italian by adding an "i" (also: "y"). However, he just became a laughing stock and was mocked in a poem written in 1796. ¹

¹ "Critique du Salon ou les tableaux en Vaudeville", 1796. Quoted in Belleudy, 1931, p. 242.