Jean-Marc Nattier
Elisabeth Rigoley d’Ogny as Night
1751
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, 53 1/4 x 41 1/2 in. (135.3 x 105.4 cm.)
Credit Line
The Mary Frick Jacobs Collection
Object Number
1938.181
The mythological portrait was one of the most sought-after specialties of Jean-Marc Nattier. Dubbed “the painter of beauty” by one of his contemporaries, Nattier flattered his sitters by showing them in guises of radiant goddesses. He also idealized his sitters’ features in accord with contemporary notions of female attractiveness, giving them flawless skin, oval faces, and full lips. Here Elizabeth Rigoley d’Ogny assumes the guise of Aurora, goddess of the dawn, who sits on a cloud and scatters flowers over the earth to announce the coming of day.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, by bequest, 1938; Mary Frick Jacobs by purchase, 1925; from Georges Wildenstein, Paris; Georges Wildenstein by purchase from Col. S.R. Bertron; Col. S.R. Bertron by purchase from Georges Wildenstein; Vicomte de Pontac, Chateau de Pontac, near Bordeaux
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, 50th anniversary exhibition, May 1920.
Jacobs, Dr. Henry Barton. The Collection of Mary Frick Jacobs. Baltimore, MD: Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs, 1938, plate 21, unpaged.
Xavier Salmon, "Jean-Marc Nattier 1685-1766," Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999, p. 134, repr. fig. 3
On View at the BMA
