Editing Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (section)

==== Marie Antoinette and her Children 1787 ====
[[File:Marie Antoinette and her Children by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.jpg|thumb|280px|''[[Marie Antoinette and Her Children|Marie Antoinette and her Children]]'', 1787, [[Palace of Versailles]]. During the Napoleonic regime, this portrait was taken down by order of Napoleon, who had become concerned about the number of people who visited the gallery to see it. Instead of removing it from the gallery, the guards placed it in a dark corner, and visitors paid a small sum of money to see it. Vigée Le Brun was pleased to see it again there after her return from exile, and later still to see it displayed normally after the [[Bourbon Restoration in France|Bourbon restoration]].]]

Vigée Le Brun's later ''[[Marie Antoinette and Her Children|Marie Antoinette and her Children]]'' (1787) was an attempt to improve the Queen's image by making her more relatable to the public, in the hopes of countering the bad press and negative judgments that Marie Antoinette had recently received.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Le dossier d'une oeuvre d'actualité politique : Marie-Antoinette et ses enfants par Mme Vigée Le Brun (2e parties) |last=Baillio |first=Joseph |journal=L'Oeil |number=310 |date=May 1981 |pages=53-60, 90-91}}</ref> The portrait shows the Queen at home in the [[Palace of Versailles]], engaged in her official function as the mother of the King's children, but also suggests Marie Antoinette's uneasy identity as a foreign-born queen whose maternal role was her only true function under [[Salic law]].<ref name="HydeMilam">{{Cite book |title=Women, Art and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe |editor1-last=Hyde |editor1-first=Melissa |editor2-last=Milam |editor2-first=Jennifer |chapter=The Cradle is Empty: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette, and the Problem of Invention |author1-last=Sheriff |author1-first=Mary D. |publisher=[[Ashgate Publishing]] |location=Burlington, Vermont |date=2003 |pages=164–187}}</ref> The child, [[Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France|Louis Joseph]], on the right is pointing to an empty cradle, which signified the Queen's recent loss of a child, further emphasizing Marie Antoinette's role as a mother. Vigée Le Brun was initially afraid of displaying this portrait due to the Queen's unpopularity and fear of another negative reaction to it, to such a degree that she locked herself in at home and prayed incessantly for its success. However, she was soon greatly pleased at the positive reception for this group portrait, which was presented to the King by M. de Angevilliers, Louis XVI's minister of arts. Vigée Le Brun herself was also presented to the King, who praised the painting and told her "I know nothing about painting, but I grow to love it through you". The portrait was hung in the halls of Versailles, so that Marie Antoinette passed it on her way to mass, but it was taken down after the [[Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France|Dauphin's]] death in 1789.

Later on, during the [[First French Empire|First Empire]], she painted a posthumous portrait of the Queen ascending to heaven with two angels, alluding to the two children she had lost, and Louis XVI seated on two clouds. This painting was titled ''The Apotheosis of the Queen''. It was displayed in the chapel of the Infirmerie Marie-Thérèse, rue Denfert-Rochereau, but vanished at some point in the 20th century. She also painted numerous other posthumous portraits of the Queen, and of King Louis XVI.