Marie-Denise Villers
Many paintings by women artists have become mistakenly attributed to men, including this engaging image that was once ascribed to Jacques Louis David (and then to another female artist Constance Marie Charpentier – here you can learn about her and this story). It is now thought to be by the portraitist Marie-Denise Villers, sister of the artist Marie-Victoire Lemoine. Although little known today, Villers was a gifted pupil of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson; if the attribution to Villers is correct, this painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1801. Apart from demonstrating the artist’s technical skill in trompe l’oeil ("fool the eye") painting, the broken windowpane is unsettling, but inexplicable.
P.S. This amazing masterpiece (those details! ... that woman's gaze!) is on the cover of our Women Artists Notebook. :)