Marie Antoinette's

"Uhh, lady? Your nip is showing!" She is quite beautiful.

Perhaps Grueze felt she had an uninteresting face :D

Heaven forbid! She's gorgeous!

Proof that I'm actually a woman: I studied this painting a great deal without even *noticing* the nipple first! I was more interested in her hat...

Would very much like to see more posts on the "middling sort" and even woodswomen. I would be a nice change.
Regards, Le Loup.

I think she is beautiful, wardrobe malfunction and all. I noticed the, er, rosebud right off - what does that say about Fitzwilliam Miller?

The portrait is beautiful. If he wanted to show she was very sexy, he didn't need to show that :P
She has a lovely face, and a very nice expresion.

We need to get to a place where an artist's decision to show off that a particular model had lovely hands to paint is not less controversial than to think that her bosom was equally lovely. And the same would go for stomachs, fat and thin, male and female. This 'hierarchy of decency' egarding body parts is highly ridiculous, when you stop to think about it.

Oh WOW--she's a looker! And what a fabulous hat. I, too, didn't even notice that her "headlight" was on, so taken was I by the rest of the painting. I loooove me some Jean-Baptiste!

As scandalous as we may view such "wardrobe malfunctions" to be nowadays, imagine what a ruckus Grueze must have caused back in 1780!

I'm with Mme Berg. The first time I saw this painting I didn't notice the now obvious wardrobe malfunction. I went right to her hat.

Fabulous, Lush and Sexy. Love the little "peep."

I was curious to see if I could find anything on-line about the identity of this lovely woman (and why her pretty breast might be visible--fashion? just because it's pretty?). Nothing on the sitter, but this painting, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, once belonged to Thomas Dowse (1772-1856) of Cambridge, Mass., who gave it to the Boston Athenaeum, which sold it to the MFA in 1975. Dowse's house still stands in Cambridge, although much-changed--his first floor is now home to a Starbucks. I wonder where and when Dowse, a notable collector, acquired it? I enjoyed your interesting posts very much! Josephine

Can we say demirep?

P.S. this reminds of the portrait-painting scene in Stage Beauty where the painter drawls that to drum up interest in the subject, she needs to show some t*t.