The Lady with the Veil

Beneath a black lace veil that frames her face and powdered hair, the young woman meets the viewer with a faint, knowing smile: she is Marie Suzanne Giroust, herself an accomplished pastellist and a member of the Académie royale, who had married Alexander Roslin in 1759. Roslin painted her in 1768, dressed for a fancy-dress ball, at the height of his career as the most fashionable portraitist of the French court, and the picture became one of the most celebrated images of eighteenth-century portraiture — a likeness of the artist’s own wife that transcends the private portrait to become a masterpiece of the Rococo. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.