Vigée-Le Brun, Julie As Flora, Goddess Of Flowers

After fleeing France following the revolution of 1789, she went to Italy and finally to St. Petersburg, Russia, and in 1799 Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun painted one of many portraits of her daughter Julie in, Julie as Flora, Goddess of Flowers. Viewed in the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida this 129.5 × 97.8 cm oil on canvas painting illustrates Vigée-Le Brun’s inspiration by Greco-Roman attire when she lived for a time in Naples, near the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. The background is reminiscent of the lush, mountainous landscape of southern Italy that she would have seen years earlier. Since she was the court painter of Marie Antoinette (Queen of France), she became one of France’s most highly regarded portraitist. She was adept at

By adding subtler, yet vivid hues of blue and red to her daughter’s portrait, she was able to bring out her daughter’s youth and vibrancy. The flowing white dress Julie wore illustrates a classical antiquity and reflects a prevailing fashion at the time. Her paintings capture an essence of time where Aristocrats lived in grandeur and the bourgeois lived in a modest way, which all changed after the French revolution. I feel that is it important to remember the way the French use to live by and understand why it was significant to have a change in the way people lived. Vigée-Le Brun was one of the few women who were able to attend the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in a time where the art of painting was dominated by men. Her painting speaks to me more since she demonstrated through this painting of her daughter Julie that women could paint portraits just as good or even better than the dominant male