A new pastel by Maurice Quentin de La Tour purchased by the Musée du Louvredu Louvre

5/5/25 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée du Louvre - Let us begin with Casanova: "During dinner, my main occupation was to study Silvia, who enjoyed the highest reputation: I judged her to be above everything that had been published about her. She was about fifty years old, elegantly built, with a noble bearing, easy manners, affable, cheerful, subtle in her remarks, obliging to everyone, full of wit and without the slightest air of pretension. Her face was an enigma, for it inspired keen interest and pleased everyone; and yet, on closer inspection, it did not have a single striking feature; one could not say that she was beautiful, but no one would have thought her ugly". Xavier Salmon, who quoted this passage in his rich monograph "Maurice Quentin de La Tour. L’Œil absolu" published in June 2024 by Cohen&Cohen, was slightly more direct when he also wrote that her masculine features never detracted from her beauty. One cannot help but agree with him when viewing the pastel (ill. 1) recently acquired by the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts.

An image of the woman and not of the famous 18th-century actress, as Xavier Salmon, director of the department and pastel specialist, rightly points out, this work shows us Silvia "dressed in a fashionable yellow dress embellished with bows, gathered ribbons and a scattering of small squares, all in blue, her wig adorned with feathers and blue and white silk flowers". The hand of the man who was nicknamed the prince of pastel artists is immediately recognisable. Little known, and even a priori never exhibited since the Salon of 1751, this portrait has been published very little: in his indispensable Dictionary…