"Our picture is a society portrait. Less solemn and codified than most of Louis Elle’s works, it is presented as a bust rather than with the artist’s preferred knee-length framing – the latter also preferred by the Beaubrun brothers. With its neutral dark background which brings the sitter closer to the viewer, the canvas is among the artist’s most intimate without losing any of its solemnity. The tight framing increases the emphasis on the young woman’s lively penetrating gaze which has sometimes led to a desire to identify her as Madame de Sévigné.

Although the dates do not contradict that identification –Marie de Rabutin, Marquise de Sévigné, was twenty-five years old in 1650 – this identification is refuted through comparison with portraits of the letter-writer who was, among other things, famous for her blondness. On the other hand, the resemblance of our sitter with that in an anonymous painting conserved in the Museum of Port-Royal des Champs is striking. Close to the Beaubrun and inevitably idealized, this portrait is thought to depict Charlotte-Marie-Lorraine-Guise, grand-daughter to Duke Henri de Guise, the famous Balafré (Scarface), and daughter of Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Chevreuse, and Marie de Rohan, Anne of Austria’s confidante.

Born in 1627, the Demoiselle of Chevreuse was known for her beauty and was, with her mother, one of the main figures in the Princes’ Fronde (uprising). Lover to Jean-François de Gondi, future Cardinal of Retz and a grand adversary to Mazarin, she was subsequently promised to Prince Armand de Conti, but the intervention of the Grand Condé, Conti’s older brother, and their sister, the Duchess of Longueville, sank the project. The Regent then imagined uniting Charlotte with Cardinal Mazarin’s nephew, Paolo Mancini, in order to seal the reconciliation between the frondeurs and the court, but the Duchess of Chevreuse actively opposed it. The princess died in November 1652 in Paris and was deeply mourned by her mother.

A.Z. transl. chr" [2]