Focus on this artwork and discuss the History.
It depicts the young wife of Eugène Oudiné, one of Flandrin's fellow painters at the Villa Medici. It was the first portrait Flandrin painted after his return from Rome and he produced it after a relatively short time lapse. It was very successfully exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1840.
The painting is interpreted as meant to symbolize bourgeois virtue as the pose of the woman appears devoid of life, very rigid and each element seems to highlight modesty and chastity, everything here being, according to Patrice Béghain, "nothing but order, stiffness and symmetry".
Paris Salon Eugène Oudiné Villa Medici Oudiné